The ten step process…you too can achieve this splendor!

Here we go again… This is an ongoing cycle with the girl. Weeks and months go by and then I realize we are wading knee deep to reach her bed at night. Okay, so maybe I notice and maybe knee deep is an exaggeration BUT with her strong spirit at the end of the day I pick and choose my battles so long as she’s safe…mostly. At a certain point I do start secretly hoping that natural consequences intervene and she steps on a barbie shoe.

Alas it gets to a point where her entire mood is heavy and angsty and Rawwwwr and then,,, I realize maybe the recent extreme emotions and always bothered attitude could be attributed to the abyss that has become her room. At that point we carve out time to tackle her room. This time my suggestion to make a list (free printable) and write a blog post about it was enough motivation for her to jump on board with the task. Here’s to hoping our list helps her stay on top of things and if they get a little out of sorts she has actionable directions to reel it back in. I will say this is the first room reboot with absolutely no fighting, no arguing and lots of laughing. It doesn’t get much better than that. Here is our list!

We are winging it with our blog here and of course forgot to photograph a couple of steps. Oh well..you know how to tidy books and take out trash, right?

Thanks for visiting and following us along to finding our way!

Growing up my mama had a plethora of craft supplies, I remember going through her stash and finding bits and bobs to create with. I’d catch it later from her every time because I had definitely mixed all of her carefully organized drawers up, spilled beads everywhere, took every lid off each tote and unknowingly (or maybe knowingly) stolen the good scissors. These days I have my own mama stash, for now it’s carefully organized and secured in a stack of several very heavy vintage suitcases. Once in a while I do let the kids pick items to create with but it’s not as fun as going through my mama’s stash with wild abandon but I’m sure this will change once their tiny arms gain strength! For now Nina is already beginning to amass a stockpile of her own! For this project we again found some inspiration and have fallen in love with tassels (here is a great tutorial) then we just cracked open the jewelry and paint supply suitcases! We each picked our colors and painted our big wooden beads.

 

 

Our adventure really began weeks ago. Before we discovered our blog title (a future post will reveal this magic), before I started learning how to set up and write a blog… I bought some thrift store shirts and more items for our project stash. Ya’ll know I’m a pinterest-aholic and my girl is turning into one too, we are starting to save ideas together! I gave her a few options to pick our first project and she chose a pretty embroidered shirt. We had the shirts to work with, matching jeans, gold belts, a ton of embroidery thread and needles so we were ready to go! I let her help pick out the patterns and thread color/placement then this Mama went with the picks that I felt confident could be done easily! My favorite stitch was the loopy Basque stitch. The handiwork isn’t perfect but it was fun to learn and collaborate together, I’m sure I’ll get more practice!

As a mother you expect to bond instantly with each of your children. Before kids I imagined this bond would be an impenetrable force, stronger than diamonds and more amazing than fireworks. I found my lofty expectation, the one of unbreakable closeness to my offspring being never ending was really letting me down. My personal realization has been that, like in any relationship there are ebbs and flows, times that require specific attention and hard work to keep strong even with my own three children.

The creation of our blog, Black Taffy is specifically intended to help strengthen the connection I nurture with my daughter. I’m working on other ideas for my boys. I started brainstorming on how to create closeness, trust and more fun with her. What does she love? What exactly do I still enjoy? She loves fashion, but she marches to her own drum. I can relate, I was/am the same. WOW, I found a commonality. My daughter is crafty (like her mama) and always looking up DIY you tube videos and tutorials. I pitched the idea of our own DIY fashion blog to her, she loved it!

We will be posting about outfits and accessories we create together. I scoured the web for DIY mom and daughter outfit ideas, I couldn’t really find what I was looking for. I’m hoping to spread our ideas around that other mom, daughter duos will find inspiring. Maybe I can even find those moms who are already doing this, there has to be more! Most of all, even if no one ever reads our little bubble of the internet my greatest hope is for our bond to grow and flourish.