moosh in indy.

I used to make a grand list of resolutions. Lose 10 lbs., write a book, complete a triathlon…crap like that.

I then became a little more realistic. Get to the weight on my driver’s license, stop using four letter words and run a mile without wanting to die.

Then reality kicked in and my resolutions followed suit. Find good smelling fabric softener and make my bed everyday. I actually did pretty well at these two. So the following year my resolution was that I resolved myself to keep my previous year’s resolutions.

Out of my fabric softener resolution came a pseudo holiday in the land of moosh.

Fabric softener day.

One day, about every other month, I would use the last of my fabric softener and would get to buy a new bottle and/or box. Oh how I looked forward to fabric softener day. Every other month Snuggle, Bounce and Downy would come out with new ways to entice me to try their newest concoction of clean laundry bliss.

Snuggle Blue Sparkle and Downy Cashmere something in the light orange bottle have always remained front runners.

So here I am.

December 31st.

I think it’s time I move on from fabric softener and a made bed.

So here goes.

In 2009 I will not make myself feel guilty for not having resolutions.

Oh I have them, resolutions. I have about seven. But I’m not going to utter them out loud.

Blissful ignorance 2009!

(Speaking of Blissful. I’m speaking at the Blissdom Conference February 6-7, 2009 in Nashville, TN. Wanna go? Last day for early bird pricing on registration and hotel is today.)

Cody has four sisters. No brothers. Cody has one wife and one daughter, no sons. I distinctly remember walking through the grocery store with him tossing my feminine products in the air like a football, that’s when I realized how awesome a boy who grew up with nothing but girls could be.

This is Cody’s baby sister. (He is the second oldest.)

I took her pictures for practice and for her birthday. Which is today.

Happy Birthday Olivia!

She made it through high school with a 4.0. She made it through her undergrad with a 4.0. She made it through graduate school with a 3.8. She has a job as on the tax team at a very affluent company. She just passed her CPA exam. She owns her own home. Pays her own bills.

Today? She turns 23.

I know.

…no one can deny the sparkle of this season.

I hope you are all somewhere safe and warm with the ones you love.

I know I am, and for this I am grateful.

Happy Birthday Jesus.

While I could give you a list of “chores” I abhor and avoid until absolutely necessary, I could just as easily give you a list of “chores” that I secretly get excited about. Or better yet, how to get me to do chores at your house without even asking.

1. Leave your clean laundry out in a pile. I will fold it. I love to fold laundry. I know of at least seven people who read this blog who can attest to my love of laundry folding.

2. Doing laundry. Some people are squicked out at the idea of someone else doing their laundry. I’ll do it in a heartbeat because I know at the end I will get to fold it. And smell it. Clean laundry smell. Mmmm. The whole process is made even better by Soap Nuts from Laundry Tree. I got samples from BlogHer in July and have been loyal ever since. My sister and I have both been known to find excuses to do laundry we love it so much. Sick. I know.

3. Vacuuming. Well, not my house. I have a circa 2000 Hoover vacuum that smells like burnt hair whenever it is turned on. But I’ll vacuum your house. If you have a Dyson. Both my dad and my MIL have Dysons and I have been known to purposely spill things for an excuse to use their Dysons. It also gives me a sick sense of satisfaction that even though my MIL keeps an incredibly tidy house, the Dyson will suck up things from her carpet no one ever knew existed. Kind of like seeing the perfectly popular girl with lipstick on her teeth. I stroke them everytime I pass one in a store whispering “someday, someday.”

4. Ironing. Did you just hear my husband snort? That’s because I don’t really iron HIS shirts. They’re so big and there’s so many and his pants with the cuffs and the pleats and let’s just say he now knows why dry cleaners are in business. But I do like to iron. When I knew Cody was going to be going to law school and that law stuff involves fancier clothes than jeans I figured I had better invest in a good iron so I didn’t dread ironing when I had to do it. I have this Rowenta iron. And whoo. It’s good. 

Now. Is there someone out there who loves to do dishes and mop the floor? Because those are the things I dread and put off as long as possible. Let me know, I’m really into starting a whole Canadian/American border blogger commune with a Target and really good health care.

****COMMENTS CLOSED. Contest over. The winner of the 90 WPM dress is Britt from Kisses of Angels. Congrats lady! To everyone else who entered, remember you can still get 15% off your entire order from shabby apple with code “mooshinindy15off” through February 1st****

Modesty is a big deal to me. For both religious reasons and personal reasons.

The personal reasons being my chubby knees.

The religious reasons being respect for myself and for the religious garment I choose to wear.

Somedays I believe it would be easier to mill about town in a habit than try to keep everything tucked in, covered and in its place. Take my trip to Florida with my sister last year:

It would have been a lot easier to wear a strapless bra and go without the undershirt. But I would have felt naked and constantly worried that something was going to pop out at a very bad moment. Of all the places to be wearing a sundress properly it’s on the beach in Florida, but I couldn’t do it. I had to be covered.

Then there was my 23rd birthday/going away dance party extravaganza. Again. Had to be covered.

While the undershirts are well and good, they’re not always the greatest option.

Which leads me to my most favorite clothing find of all.

Fancy dresses with sleeves built in.

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HARD THEY ARE TO FIND?

I think I own three dresses with built in sleeves. Two of them can pass for fancy. One of them gets passed around amongst my neighbors because it may be the only fancy black modest dress in existence.

Until now.

Enter brilliant women who like clothes.

They start a clothing line called Shabby Apple.

I’ve mentioned them before, and I may never shut up about them.

All their dresses COME WITH SLEEVES AND DECENT HEMLINES FOR GIRLS WITH CHUBBY KNEES.

And they’re pretty. OH, are they pretty.

Go ahead, look around, find your favorite. Tell me which one you love in a comment and you’ll be entered to win this one in your size:

Can you just imagine? With boots? With kicky heels? With shiny flats? I’m so in love with jewel tones I’m considering therapy.

They also have little girls’ dresses AND maternity dresses. *swoon*

Tweet this giveaway for an extra entry. 

Comments will close at 8pm EST on Monday December 22nd.

Winner will be picked by random Monday night. (Anyone anywhere in the world can enter.)

You can also get 15% off any order by entering the code “mooshinindy15off” until February 1st.

I love making you love the stuff I love.

I am currently writing this with the equivalent of a very tasty breakfast smeared on my face.

It involves oatmeal, sugar and a few other random things floating around my MIL’s kitchen.

Google told me how. Well, google told me to try some jojoba oil and I told google that when I step outside I smell cows and I’m awoken to a rooster every morning so therefore jojoba oil is not really a viable option from where I stand. 

Cow pies and roadkill however? Plentiful.

Anyway.

This is my face meeting up with the recession. I do not have naturally dewey glowy luminous skin, I have photoshop. I do however have naturally blotchy, zitty, puffy skin. WHEE!

I have yet to find something that works. And that’s when we had the budget that allowed me to find products that worked. (Even though they didn’t.) I used that Olay stuff that promised luminosity. I used the entire Philosophy line only to find myself with bad skin and without a lot of money. I failed with Proactive and pretty much the only time I came close to lovely skin is when I washed my face with snow for a week.

Seriously.

And then the snow melted and I was out of luck.

So here I sit, with Quaker Oats on my face. (Not even from a tub, they’re from an instant baggie. *sigh*)

I’m thinking back on all the dumb things I’ve done for beauty.

Mayo in my hair? Check.

Eggs in my hair? Check.

Cooking oil on my face? Check.

Beer in my hair AND on my face? Check.

Rock salt as a scrub? I’m pretty sure sliding down a razor naked would hurt less.

So tell me, have you ever done anything dumb for beauty? Do you have any suggestions of things I can make out of food storage that will give me the dewey luminous skin I dream of?

My, uh, “mask?” Starting to burn.

Stay tuned…

Two million one hundred and two thousand four hundred minutes.

That’s how many minutes the moosh will have been in this world as of 4:23 pm today.

I was watching her sleep today and wondered what memories she’s going to keep from her childhood. 

Will she remember catching snowflakes on her tongue?

Will she remember the hat she’s wearing? Will she remember this trip? Will she remember that she asked for snow? Will she remember the crochet hook she has carried around as her magic snow wand?

Will she remember how much work I put into her birthday cakes? Because if I had a way of forcing her to remember something it would be her birthday cakes. These suckers are a lot of work. (Remember last year? Let me remind you…)

Will she remember that even though this year’s cake isn’t quite as fancy, it tasted better and she spent the entire day talking to her Sleeping Beauty cake? (Seriously, her and the cake? BFFs4EVER.)

Will she remember dancing with her grandpa at a Christmas party to Frank Sinatra? Will she remember decorating a Christmas tree for the first time? Will she remember the hours spent on the floor with her grandparents playing Candy Land? Will my grandchildren ever play with one of toys she will receive as a gift today? Will she have fond memories of her birthdays and make a big deal out of them for her kids because I did?

Will she remember the animal pancakes we had for breakfast on the morning of her fourth birthday?

Four years kid.

Happy Birthday.

I hope all your memories are happy ones.

Trying to decide who to give $6,000 worth of HP technology to is like trying to name which kid is your favorite without feeling like guilty garbage.

My parents can attest that I have been a wreck. As soon as I thought I had the winner pinned down I got another dozen brilliant entries.

To those who entered? You are amazing people. To be able to come up with people to share with so quickly. To be honest my first thought was “I WOULD KEEP IT ALL AND NEVER LEAVE MY HOUSE.”  But you came up with strangers, friends, relatives, charities, churches, hospitals, women’s shelters. It made me think of what I really would do if I had won. I’m astounded there’s so much good in this world. Thank you. I wish I could give you all computers, but I can’t. Instead I ask whatever holiday spirits are at work to bless all of you for being so eager to share.

Alas my winner is Bennie from South Carolina. I have come across so many people in the blogging world who are blessed/burdened with sick or disabled children. I can attest to the power that blogging gives a parent and family who rarely ever leave a sick child’s bedside. Blogging allows others to share in triumphs and support through setbacks in a way never seen before.

Ben is going to be spreading some serious love, magic and hope to an awful lot of parents, children and families. Especially ones stuck in the hospital on Christmas Eve, rather than at home with their family as I will be lucky enough to be.

He was also gracious enough to donate one of the computers to whomever I felt deserved it the most. His generosity will be going to a single mom in New Mexico to help her daughter through college.

335 entries. More through email. This was tough, yo.

Bennie, let the magic begin.

HP and Microsoft Windows Live? Thanks for making this possible.

To the rest of you? There are plenty of contests still running through the 22nd of December. I will have a links in my sidebar to all of them through the end of this contest. 

Go forth and spread the magic.