DIY Mint Extract

DIY Mint Extract

Finally found a use for all my extra mint. DIY mint extract: Bunch of mint, smash it, add vodka, let it chill out for a month, strain, use.  Awesome! I always have way more mint than I can use. Every year when the pineapples or mangos make an appearance in the stores I snatch them up and make my pineapple or mango salsa which has a lot of mint too. 


I have a great picnic rice salad recipe to post. I've been a little swamped with work recently. Story of our lives right? 


I hope this is inspires you to make your own mint extract for holiday cookies or grown up drinks. 
Happy Weekend!


Thea

Family Pictures

Thea (center) with her kids including the fur baby

The picture above was taken on Mother's Day, this past Sunday for our international friends. If you look very closely you'll notice that this seemingly good family portrait has a classic family element in it.

In my time of being a mom I have never had a family picture that was 100%.
Someone is blinking, looking the wrong way, choking themselves...(I seriously have a picture of my son choking himself in a studio portrait.)
It makes for interesting conversation when I have guests over.

I think since we as a society have moved away from the studio portraits since we have such amazing capabilities with digital we are more relaxed & ourselves in photos. I remember in the 1980's posing awkwardly in knee high socks and ugly pink dresses hating being positioned for the "perfect" picture. It was horrible. But in contrast there is something special about professional family portraits. I have copies of some my family's from the late 1800's. They are pretty amazing.

My youngest daughter has her classroom picture today and I always feel I have to coach my kids into smiling naturally. Not super cheesy anime face smiling. As most visual people I really enjoy looking at pictures to associate a time and place about someone. My kids in particular, duh right?  All though I wish I was better about remembering to print them more often. Are you guys good about that? Do you still take your kids to a studio to get family pictures? I wanna know if I am a slacker mom on this.

Momma's Boy & his Momma

And in case you didn't find the classic "element" in the picture above. Here's a bigger hint.

xo-Thea

What A Mom Really Wants For Mother's Day

Hello internet friends! I chose not to do a big post about Mother's Day.
Some of us lost ours moms, some love our moms dearly, some can't stand being in the same room as our moms and some of us have Asian moms (like me).

But there comes a time in our lives as mothers where we get a selfish bone and say;
"Hey!!! I'm THE mom. - That's MY DAY!" and you just send your mom a card or think a good thought of your mom & call it good and allow your children to lavish you with love and affection above and beyond what they normally do.

I know I just created a little dream scenario for you there. Most of us will end up doing housework and making dinner like any other day.
The alternative is fires in the microwave and messes that you will have to clean up Monday after work.

But I know a lot of mamas and honestly you know what makes us happy, sleep.
Good old fashioned uninterrupted zzzz's.

Thea's not enough sleep pose. In the style of a Serendipity Book creature.

So for all of you teenagers/husbands/SOs/best friends of a mama the best thing you can give a mom is a couple extra hours of sleep.

Moms out there, can I get a "Hell Yeah!"

May your dishes be light, may your kids not fight and may Mother's Day do you right.
Have a lovely Mother's Day!

Thea

Everything is popping up!

Broken pot but the flowers don't care.

Aside from having random sneezing sessions I really love spring.  Varying shades of green reappear among our dark evergreens.

Lily of the valley flowers.

I actually love all the seasons, not that we actually get them all in the Pacific Northwest but I think I genuinely like them all.  I am especially excited about spring this year because I installed a much larger gardening space in my backyard. 

New garden bed - early spring 2012. View from the second floor.

I needed more room for bigger foods, like potatoes, corn and squashes. 

Potatoes are coming!

This year with my teenagers seemingly eating up all my groceries as soon as I buy them,  I decided to make an effort to grow as much food as my yard would allow. I've always grown the basics for salads including tomatoes but I wanted to take it up a notch.

Rhubarb

My kids do participate with gardening. They help me with weeding, removing rocks, watering & general maintenance.  Even simple stuff helps and everyone likes to harvest what has grown. Especially fresh peas.... mmmmm!

Baby tomatoes

I know gardening has been really trendy the past few years among folks in my age group. I think its wonderful and a great sign that people really do care about what they eat and using your spaces to the maximum. Its really such a shame to have a huge lawn and not do anything with it. Right?

On a semi related the Northwest's favorite chicken lady is doing her East Coast leg of her book tour right now. If you happen to be in the Washington DC/Maryland area and are interested in learning to keep chickens be sure to make it out to see her talks.

And don't forget to grab her book too!

Enjoy your gardens!

Thea

Senior Year - Introduction Part Two

As mentioned yesterday, my good friend Rebekah & I are doing a project called The Senior Year. Which will be a documentation of our birthday twin daughters Madison & Jina's "last year at home". It's totally for selfish coping reasons but we hope that it will encourage fellow moms who will also be experiencing this milestone to take it all in stride and squeeze every bit of bittersweetness out of it.
Being born 20 minutes later, hence the younger birthday twin this is the conclusion of the introduction - Jina.

--
The past few months Rebekah & I have been commiserating together over mail from colleges addressed to the girls.  Somehow that mail initiated a wave of emotion. This is it. We're in the home stretch, the goal is in sight.

17 is the great in between. Last year it was the driver's license and car. Next year will be graduation & "adulthood".
Ironically Jina often tosses a mini dialogue from a Gilmore Girls episode out at me:

Rory: "There wasn't really a point you know because I get it, he is starting his first real job. I mean, he needs time to adjust and focus and learn the lay of the land. I mean its good that he's trying to be a grown-up. You know, so now I'm trying to be a grown-up. So why am I gonna get all pouty because I don't get to do it?"
Lorelai: "Hmm. Well, that sounds like a real grown-up talking."
Rory: "Thank you."
Lorelai: "You know the one thing that grown-ups don't call themselves?"
Rory: "What?"
Lorelai: "Grown-ups.  They say, "adults," and they pronounce it "ah-dults."
Rory: "It stinks!"

She quotes it because I call myself a "grown up" but oddly enough that quote is relevant to this post.
I mean I get it, Jina is getting older. She needs to focus and learn the lay of the land.
It is supposed to be this way and I shouldn't get all pouty about it.

This is my mantra for this year.

I do consider myself lucky in the sense that she doesn't want to go to an out of state college. She loves the state she was born and raised in. She is hoping to attend a college I once roamed about 3 hours away from where we live now. There she will become the most attractive accountant that has ever existed.

Jina

I was bragging to a friend about how she wants to stay in state just last week as he was recommending a good car to get her to replace the aging one she has now. He recommended a car that I thought would be bad on gas mileage, when I replied with that and also suggesting that she'll come home to see me often he had the nerve to say, "She's not going to come down and see you every weekend."
I wanted to reach through the phone and punch him for saying such blasphemy!
What does he know?!?! 
Instead I replied, "Yeah, you're right."

Any parent can imagine how crushing it is to know that their daily "reign" is drawing to a close. I will no longer be the daily authority, she will be her own self government. I know that she & I will forever be close but to remove her from my regular daily life will be very hard.  I already cry thinking about emptiness that will come from her inevitable departure. I joke that her room will become my new office but I know in reality it will be sort of a shrine to her.  It will be a museum of her old toys and clothes, scribbles on the wall, old school projects and other things that will illuminate the memory of the little girl that once lived in it. It will become just her room at her mom's house.

I've always known what the term empty nest means but I didn't realize that it would arrive so soon for me. I do have three other children but I am at the cusp of learning whether or not it will become easier with each child that leaves or will it get harder. I'm sensing that the latter is true. I know I sound a touch tragic but when she leaves it starts a snowball effect, my kids are only a couple years apart. I am bracing myself for one of life's roller-coaster rides.

Jina & Thea 2011

Being the oldest child she has had inherited privileges and responsibilities which have prepared her to stand alone on her own. Cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, I'm confident that she can handle all of that. She has even enough foresight to have already asked me to write down in a book a collection of recipes I make to take with her. TO TAKE WITH HER.......? 

She talks so calmly about her goals and intentions as if she had this all planned out for a decade. Maybe she has. The only comment of concern I've heard from her is how one accumulates all the things needed for an apartment. Crock pot, couch, towels, etc. All valid concerns of course. But isn't she sad about the idea of not seeing me daily? Isn't she worried about how I feel, as selfish as that sounds?

I worry that I'm going to get a speeding ticket the first time she calls me and needs me there.

I worry about her being out late with friends and having to pass by unsavory people.

I worry that she's going to work too much to pay for school.

I worry because I'm her mother and I'll be worrying about her when I'm 87. 

To answer my own question, no she isn't.
Its not that I'm not relevant enough or not close enough to her. Its just her eyes are fixed on the home stretch too. The goal is in sight and she's ready to receive her prize.  (This is how my dad felt 19 years ago.)

2011 Jina texting backstage at a benefit fashion show.

She is just days away from her school's Step Up day. The junior class symbolically steps up to the senior class as the current senior class graduates and says good bye. Things are getting real.
I feel like the school year just began, where did the time go?

As they say in business "The only nonrenewable commodity- is time."
So true that is. I feel like the past 17 years has just flown by with my best friend and constant companion since I was 18. My very special gift that I have completely given my all to, who made my heart grow 3 sizes the day she was born, my Sweet Child O' Mine.

-Thea Starr

Senior Year - Introduction Part One

Sounds super serious from the title right? It is actually. Today begins the countdown of the "birthday twins'" last year before they take off to grab lives of their own.
The birthday twins are my dear friend Rebekah's daughter Madison and my own daughter Jina. Both girls were both born on May 30th, 1995. Madison is about 20 minutes older.
Starting today Rebekah and I are beginning The Senior Year project where we are going to document our experiences over the the next 12 months which is our eldest daughter's "last year" at home before college.

Since Madison has those 20 minutes ahead of Jina here's Rebekah's introduction.
-Thea
---

1 more month.  1 more month until my first baby, my delightful child, turns 17 years old.  I find that culturally there is always a lot of hullabaloo surrounding “sweet 16” – you can drive, it’s a milestone and an expected celebration of maturity; 18 offers it’s own amazement to the masses, but I am finding the idea of 17 to be daunting, exciting, terrifying, amazing, depressing, and above all else, a wake up call.  The Beatles knew it too, in their song And I Saw her Standing There, “Well, she was just seventeen, you know what I mean.”  Yes John and Paul, I think I DO know what you mean, and it scares me.

Madison

Though 17 offers the guarantee that my child will begin to prepare for her own future and start to make her own way on this spinning rock, it also marks the last year of our daily discussions.  Random babble about music, boys that she is interested in, boys that annoy her but keep texting her, art, literature, bad Facebook memes, crappy tv that she doesn’t have time to watch, and the general laughter we share on a daily basis. AND let’s be frank, it denotes the last year of my jurisdiction.

Have I done enough to prepare her for being on her own?  Can she buy her own food, stock her own shelves, and cook her own meals? Can she clean and do laundry?  Balance a “checkbook” (aka debit card register)?  Is she self disciplined enough to not go to a Circa Survive concert with her last $78.27 instead of buying food or gas for 2 weeks?  I am hoping that the answer to all of these things is yes, but really, didn’t we all learn a lot about life and what to do and not to do by experiencing our own failures and mistakes?  I think that requiring her to make dinner once a week for the last 2 years has been a good training ground for her, as was her assistance with my bizarre OCD-esque laundry requirements.  This last year I need to focus more on the bank account with her and have more discussions about weaning her off the $24 eyeliner she goes through every 3 weeks and the $28 shampoo.  She will need to ask herself if getting her eyebrows done at the Benefit brow bar every 6 weeks is something she can afford to keep up or if it’s more important to her to have enough money to pay her cell phone bill. Have I failed her by not making her begin her road down financial independence sooner?

Tonight said “baby” will be at a presentation for some East Coast schools…she and the Mr. are driving 2 hours to be in a meeting to “show demonstrated interest” in a school she has at the top of her wish list.  Next week she is touring the campus of a Southern California school her Uncle and Aunt are Alumni of; she’s interested in that one too.  I would love her to be more local, but her heart is set to roam free and leave California.  I have spent many, many, many moments focused on this, wanting to be a supportive mother that helps her daughter spread her wings and prepare for the world.  Part of me wants to crush her dreams before she has a chance to even apply there and tell her that even if she gets a merit based scholarship (and we all know how competitive those are) it’s too expensive to live so far away from your home base.  Is it time to play Kathy Bates and get my sledge hammer out in a Misery homage?  I could have the Mr. build an elaborate prison in the garage perhaps?  The interest letter from Westpoint, the constant stream of mailers from all over the U.S. this year have broken my heart at each postal mark….but I smile as I hand my daughter the postcards, letters, packets, and I swear one sent a fold out poster.

These are just the ramblings of a mother who knows that the sand from the hourglass is streaming faster.  The woman who watched Toy Story 3 audibly sobbing louder than anyone in the theatre when Andy’s mom looks around his newly emptied room and states, “Just…I wish I could always be with you”.  This right of passage she has worked so hard to earn is right around the corner.  It’s just on the horizon, that’s what 17 says to me.  And I get it.  I’ve never been the “clip your wings” type.  I love her with ever fiber of my being and want only the best for her.   But my heart is a little broken with the idea of her seat at the table being empty more often than not.  My baby who has been with me since I was a 19 (yes that IS a whole ‘nother Oprah), the one whom I poured every ounce of love I had to give (and even some I didn’t have to offer) into.  My toddler who would streak through the house nekkid after a tubby because she didn’t want to get dressed.  The only one of my children my mother was able to hold in her arms and sing to sleep before she died.  My child who was reading Dr Seuss to me before she was 3.  My child who knew she wanted to be a doctor when she was in kindergarten because of all of the time she spent in the hospital with asthma and pneumonia.   My adolescent who grew up a decade in just a day when her friend was murdered at school.  My teenager who respects herself and her body enough to not put herself in situations that could jeopardize her dreams.  My forever baby and first born is going to begin her journey.  I am so happy for her and I am so honored to have this last year to continue to help prepare her.

Rebekah & Madison

When I sat down to type this I promised myself I wouldn’t go to that super cheesy place – with the expected violins in the background and the Fiddler on the Roof tune.  But I can’t help it!  My heart aches with pride as well as sadness, “Is this the little girl carried?  Is this the little boy at play?  I don’t remember growing older, when did they?  When did she get to be a beauty? When did he grow to be so tall?  Wasn't it yesterday when they were small? Sunrise, Sunset…..”  

-Rebekah Norton

Thea - The Juvenile Delinquent

Man, that sounds so 1950's. But it is true. I was quite the shithead of a teenager.

I'm not even sure where I should begin this story actually.
In a daily setting today, I look like any suburban mom (younger and more stylish than average of course). I go to my children's school functions, chit chat with my neighbors and kids' parents when I run into them in my idyllic town.  I think I am pretty normal. My kids have been pretty normal so far too.

I did walk a long road to get here.
I was raised by my father who was on the older side from when I was 9 on up. I did have a few stepmothers, so my home life was pretty strange at times with those ladies. At one point my niece who is only 4 years younger than me lived with my dad & I. So I got to experience what it was like to be an older sibling in away. Did I mention that I am the baby of 6 or 3 depending on which parent we're discussing. I'm not sure if that is applicable to this post but I know many live by the birth order train of thought so there it is.

Thea, her cousin & two friends 1994

With a crazy home life any kid starts to bond with their friends who had similar situations at their homes. Granted I was born and raised in a military town on an island with not a whole lot to do so I'm sure that added fuel to my troublemaking fire.  But I had and still have some close friends who were little shits too.

Without going into much detail I was in juvenile detention a couple times, forced to go to anger management classes, expelled from school and had many hours of community service work for various punishments. I deserved all my punishments if not more.  

I wanted to put this out there because I feel that it is important to know that I have a history of not being perfect. When I publish advice on teenagers I feel as if I am relating to myself who was a handful as a teen and also relating to my own teenagers today. I have been living a trial and error life.

On all the mom blogs out there I can't say that I've read anything where a mom openly admits being a juvenile delinquent. No perfect picture painting here, I'm honest about who I was and am today. 

So far that's working out for me and my kids. As you can imagine it takes a lot to pull some shit past me. 

So there it is, judge me or commiserate. I know I wasn't the only bad kid out there :)

Thea