rita & frank

You may have seen this video already. I love it.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmh94b8PkLw&w=420&h=315]

And look, they're back!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBsArNPeajU&w=560&h=315]

what's your favorite memory?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuTj7nf4uUc&w=560&h=315]

table manners

Matt and I are in opposite camps when it comes to how Matteo eats. Matt doles out his food one crumb at a time so he doesn't get too dirty. While I, on the other hand, tend to let him eat with wild abandon. Kind of like this:

[flickr video=6190936354 secret=2f29410db9 w=400 h=300]

Kind of gross, but waaayyy more fun.

337!

Guess what? I made $337 at my garage sale this weekend! And, even better, I got rid of a TON of stuff in the process! It was a lot of work but I'm so happy I did it. For anyone out there considering having a garage sale of your own, here are some things I learned along the way.

1. Have a goal: Yes, my goal was to get rid of stuff and make some money. But my REAL, big-picture goal is re-do the built-in cabinets in our basement this winter. Whenever I'd come across something I wasn't sure I wanted to sell I asked myself if someone would give me money for it, and if that money put me closer to my goal of fixing up our basement and creating more living space for us, would I sell it to them? In almost every instance the answer was always, "HELL YES." Having that carrot on a stick motivated me to be much more objective about getting rid of things.

2. Be thorough, you never know what you might find: I got ready for the sale over the course of about three weekends. I literally went through every plastic bin, every cabinet, and every drawer in our house looking for things I could sell. Not only did I find stuff I forgot I even had that I ended up selling, I found things I forgot I even had that I'm using and enjoying now.

3. Show 'em what you got: I posted Craigslist ads Thursday and Friday and included pictures of things I was selling. I tried styling them as best I could, although that was a challenge considering I took the photos late at night in my garage, which has peeling seafoam green walls. Here's a sample:



Having pictures definitely helped. People came looking for specific things they saw in the photos and one woman even said, "Your stuff looked so cute, the pictures made me want to buy it all!" I also put up signs around the neighborhood the night before that included descriptions of things I was selling.

4. How you display things matters: I had a bunch of baby clothes to sell and a friend of mine gave me the great idea of hanging them on a clothesline with clothespins. Stuff hanging up sold, but the other stuff in a big bin did not. (I had too many things to hang them all.) People don't like to dig through bins of stuff that isn't organized. However,people do like to dig through bins of free stuff. I'll get to that tip in a minute.

I also had a lot of clothes of my own in great condition that I wanted to get rid of so I borrowed a couple of clothing racks and wrote out individual hang tags for each item (there were a few things that had never even been worn so using the tags instead of price stickers allowed me to write that on there). I also borrowed a big mirror and set up a make-shift dressing room off the side of the house. It worked! I sold TONS of clothes.



5. Have a sale at your sale: Although making money was nice, getting rid of so much stuff was almost nicer. At the beginning of the sale I put up signs that said during the last hour, everything left would be half price. People really did come back. They got stuff at crazy low prices, and I got rid of stuff I otherwise may have been stuck with.

6. Give stuff away: I set out a plate of free cookies, which helped build goodwill with my shoppers. I also had a big crate of magazines that I marked free, most of which disappeared. But the busiest bin of all was the FREE STUFF bin that had all sorts of random stuff in it. Fabric remnants, clothes with small spots and tears, gladware containers, makeup samples you pull out of magazines - gone! Most were things I otherwise would have thrown away so it was good to see them go off to good homes.

7. Invite your friends to join you: My friend Stefanie came over with some of her stuff to sell. She got rid of some stuff and made some money, I had her help and her company for a few hours, and we both ended up with some of each other's stuff that we liked. Winners all around.

One final benefit of having this sale was spending time in corners of our home that don't see a lot of action. Along the way I was also inspired to clean out the attic, better organize the back room of our basement, and am in the process of making a list of projects I'd like to tackle this winter. We've been in this house four years and that's enough time to become complacent. It's time to break some bad habits we've gotten into. When paint chips, I want to touch it up. When things break (even the little things), I want to fix them. When your neighbor shoots holes in your window with a BB gun trying to kill squirrels, I want to plug the holes up. That kind of stuff - the kind of stuff that makes your home feel much healthier inside and out.

safe house

After the Yo Gabba Gabba show last week, Matt, Matteo, Stefanie and Ayla and I
went to have dinner at Safe House, which was only a couple blocks away from the theatre. This is seriously one of the coolest and most unique restaurants I've ever been to.

Check out this video to see why:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RR8OrcFDEM&w=420&h=315]

The only thing that was a little awkward was Matteo pooped his pants at dinner. And when I say he pooped his pants, I mean HE POOPED HIS PANTS. The Safe House bathrooms aren't exactly geared toward the Koala Bear Kare crowd so I had to change him on that tiny ass counter in the bathroom under the secret medicine cabinet.

When you sit down at your table you're given a scavenger hunt, and of course, I happened to change him in the bathroom that had two items on the list. So several times while we were in there, eager scavenger hunt explorers opened the door to come in only to quickly shut it with an exclamation of "EEEEW!" or "It smells like SHIT!" Yes, yes it does. Sorry, folks.

And since we're talking about bathrooms, yes, of course I touched it.

ygg live!

OMG. It was awesome. JUST AWESOME. I got so excited when it started I seriously got tears in my eyes and totally forgot I was there because of a child.

And Matteo was totally mesmerized. I don't even think he even blinked for the first half of the show.

purple love

Just another day at the park, walking the dog in his purple skinny jeans.

yo gabba gabba LIVE

Today is the day! We're taking Matteo to see Yo Gabba Gabba Live in Milwaukee! Oh I'm so excited I can't stand it. SERIOUSLY.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riJRODogRVI&w=560&h=315]

dog on a bike

Sorry, folks. It's a busy week here in the world of Loud and Bright and I don't have much time for posting. Until I do, please enjoy this little video. I did.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuvNA-fGZG4&w=420&h=315]


(Okay, full disclousre. I've been to Target four times in the last three days. I'm Missoni obsessed. I even dreamed about it last night. This could be is another reason why posting has been light.)

ante up

An oldie but a goodie:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21OH0wlkfbc&w=420&h=345]

missoni madness

A post from a facebook friend reminded me that today was the launch of the Missoni collection at Target, so while running errands at lunch I went to check it out. Unlike the experience of the facebook poster, who said she saw 30 women in line before her store even opened, there was actually merchandise left to buy. But holy cow was it going fast! Everywhere you looked there were women with cartloads and arms full of Missoni chevron stripes.

While I totally forgot this was coming out today, apparently there are a lot of other people who have been counting down the days. The Target website crashed and many stores were completely sold out of their stock by 9 a.m.!

I grabbed a few things, including some really sweet purple ties for Matt, and the last one left of these pillows:



After work I stopped at a different store to see if I could find another of the same pillow, only to find the shelves were totally empty. With the exception of just a few sparse items, everything was gone. I asked a couple of women who worked there if it was as crazy as it looked it and wide-eyed, they shook their heads in disbelief. But they also shared that they expect more shipments to come in soon and recommended calling first thing in the morning to see if what I wanted came in. Thanks Target ladies!

As I shopped, I noticed a young girl and her Dad checking out the few things that were left, clearly disappointed. She started with the bedding, but what she wanted was gone, then I saw her looking at the candles, then accessories, but always walking away empty-handed. When I ran into her on my way to check out, I stopped and told her what I learned about future shipments. She smiled, and thanked me, obviously relieved.

After I got in my car, I realized I knew the girl. She joined my lacrosse team a couple of years ago but had to quit for financial reasons. Then it hit me. The reason the stores are all empty is because there are total assholes out there buying all of it up and reselling it on ebay. I checked ebay when I got home and sure enough, as of 6 p.m. there were more than 9,300 listings of Missoni for Target merchandise - merchandise that just went on sale today. I just checked again and now there are more than 13,600 listings. Many items are listed for five times what Target is selling them for!

The whole point of Target doing these kinds of collections is to make select brands more accessible. But greedy people gobbled up all of the merchandise within hours and now the same girls who have been bombarded by the ad campaign for this stuff, who don't have a lot of disposable income (unlike the women who bought thousands of dollars worth of merchandise to resell), can't get their hands on any of it. That just sucks. I hope there are truckloads and truckloads of Missoni for Target out there, just waiting to get to the stores, so all the high school girls out there get exactly what they want, and the jerks trying to resell on ebay get stuck with everything they don't.

10 years later

On September 11, 2001 I was in D.C. working six blocks from the White House. That morning, downtown was like something out of the movies. The part where right before a huge catastrophe is about to hit and everyone is panicking and trying to evacuate en masse. I had been late getting to work that morning and everything happened during my morning commute on the train, so there was no way to get to the internet or TV and cell phones weren't working. The only thing I knew was from what the people around me were saying and they were saying that we were being attacked - in New York and Washington, the city where I was. And no one knew what was coming next. It was terrifying.

And then, in the days after, it was heartbreaking. I would read through the paper every morning, scanning to see if there was anyone on the list of casualties I knew. There was. A high school friend in the World Trade Center, the brother of an in-law on Flight 93 - so many obituaries day after day. So much grief.

When I finally was able to get home that day, very late in the afternoon, I wrote this in my journal:

"I can't begin to explain the feeling of getting off the metro today, four blocks from the White House, and seeing a mass exodus fleeing DC. It seriously crossed my mind that I was going to be killed, along with the rest of the city, in some giant fireball that would level everything like in 'Independence Day'. Sirens were wailing, rumors were flying, people were teary eyed and terrified, I heard jets, and I couldn't get cell phone service to call someone to tell them I was okay and on my way back home."

I remember almost every detail of that day. I remember what I was wearing. I remember what the weather felt like. And I will always, always remember that fear. I still feel it when I think about where I was that morning.

But my story is nothing compared to the stories of the thousands and thousands of people who lost family, or friends, or their own lives that day. The people who helped save lives, but whose own lives have been irreversibly damaged from inhaling dust at Ground Zero. The people who went to war, fighting back, who will never come home. Today, I'm thinking of them.

There was a school a couple of blocks away from my office in DC. Shortly after the tragedy, they shared this mural and a bunch of art from the kids on the outside walls and fences.





We will never forget. Of course, we won't. How could we ever?

go pack go!

Don't worry, his next jersey is going to say RODGERS.

i know you want me

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3N8QZTsZic&w=560&h=345]

(I'm loving all these great dancing, fashion videos!)

it's that time again

If you need to find me this weekend there is a good chance I'll be at the fall Half-Pint ReSale. I'm not quite as obsessed as I was during the spring sale, when I was on the Rody hunt. But I'm still pretty freaking excited.

Speaking of Rody, Matteo still is too small to be able to mount it himself but once he's on...hoo boy!

[flickr video=6120957843 secret=1a8afcd70d w=400 h=300]

100 years of fashion in 100 seconds

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JxfgId3XTs&w=560&h=345]

new baby gate

I also spent the weekend finishing this:

before - baby death trap







after - ta da! no more rusty nails or sharp chicken wire for babies to cut themselves on!



yeah...that only took two years to fix. alright, what's next!

stuff

There's definitely some kind of fall juju in the air right now and it's sending my nesting instincts into overload. Last weekend I spent a good amount of time weeding through closets and storage containers and cupboards in preparation for a garage sale I'm planning to hold in a couple of weeks.

What I'll actually be able to sell remains to be seen. (What doesn't sell will be donated so it will still end up out of the house.) So far it feels great just to purge and know stuff is finally going OUT instead of always coming IN.

After the garage sale is over and I have lots of dollar bills and quarters in my money box at the end of the day, it can't just end there. One of my new goals is to try to be much more mindful about stuff. Making sure as much (if not more) goes out than in, and making sure the stuff that comes in is quality and has value. Whether clothing, housewares, toys, whatever - I've got to have some tougher standards or I'm going to end up right back where I started.

See this quote? (from a page out of Domino magazine, R.I.P.)



Uh huh. Now THAT'S what I'm talking about.

You know what else is awesome about that picture? That round yellow pan on the shelf under the counter. My family had a whole set of that cookware and most of it ended up with my Dad. Two days ago he called, said he noticed in a photo that I had one of the pieces sitting on my stove, and offered to send me the rest of the set. (Thanks, Dad. What a wonderful, unexpected gift.)

Yes, technically, this is more stuff. But I love those yellow pots and pans and I will keep them forever. They are beautiful, they will be used often, they are well made, and they have sentimental value.

These are some of the criteria I've come up with when deciding whether something is a keeper. What kind of criteria do you use? How do you decide what to hang on to for years and what to pass on? Please share - this is a work in progress and I still have a lot more stuff to go through!

16 months old

Matteo turned 16 months old yesterday!

wheee!

end of summer weekends

This weekend we don't have much on the calendar. Other than a family party on Sunday we plan to be out and about, savoring this last long summer weekend.

Last weekend was lovely, too.













Last weekend was the Orton Park Festival - another neighborhood festival known for great live music. They also are known for hosting a performance of a local dance group that performs Cirque de Soleil-type, aerial dance acts hanging from a giant oak tree. I snuck out by myself to watch it after Matteo went to bed Friday night, but unfortunately got there too late to get a good spot. This was my view.



As you can see, there was some slight visual interference between me and the performers, who dangled from the tree right where that ladder is standing.

Ah well, it looked like an enchanting experience for the people who were much smarter than me and came early to get good seats. And it got me out of the house, walking around and enjoying the neighborhood on my own, on an absolutely gorgeous summer night. While I love being with my guys, sometime I forget how great it feels to get away for an hour or so to just soak up what's going on with the rest of the world.

he's back

This Tuesday was the first day of school. Right now he's the biggest kid in the room and definitely means business. Watch out!

where a kid can be a kid

Last week we took Matteo to Chuck E. Cheese with Adam, Stefanie and Ayla. He had already been there the night of Joe and Carrie's wedding with his babysitter, but Matt and I hadn't been to a Chuck E. Cheese since we were kids ourselves.

I remember Chuck E. Cheese as being kind of dark, slightly creepy, and having a particular smell - like the weird smell of a roller skating rink, but mixed with pizza smell. It also didn't help my perception of kiddie pizza restaurants when I watched the movie The Rock-afire Explosion a couple of years ago, which was about people who are obsessed with the Showbiz Pizza (Chuck E.'s predecessor) animatronic characters and keep whole, working sets of them in their homes.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yNitSBXzsA&w=420&h=345]

Also making me skeptical of the Chuck E. Cheese experience was back in 2007-08, there was a Chuck E. Cheese outside of Milwaukee always showing up in the paper for fights between parents that had to be broken up by police. I kid you not, in a 15-month period during 2007-08, police had to be called to that Chuck E. Cheese to break up fights 81 times! That's crazy!

Apparently my Chuck E. Cheese prejudices were totally unwarranted. Chuck E. Cheese circa 2011 wan an altogether new and improved experience. (At least in Madison. I can't speak for Brookfield.) Matteo absolutely loved it and there were a lot of rides and games that even little ones his age could enjoy.







One of the rides they have is this huge horse, big enough for me to ride, and seemingly way too big for Matteo. At the end of the night when he had gone on almost everything else, I plunked him on the horse and off he went. He gripped that thing with his tiny knees and rode like the wind, even lifting his hand in a cheery wave when Matt came over to watch him. Check it out:

[flickr video=6083244250 secret=b39347cbfd w=400 h=300]

Toodle-oo Chuck E. Cheese! We'll be back!