Goodbye Mum

I sold my senior Homecoming mum today, sold it for 50% of the cost of the mum to begin with...so if you don't factor in inflation, that would be a negative 50% return. However, if you consider it literally plastic, paper, and ribbon hot glued together to make something ridiculously noisy that high school girls wear around for one day of their lives, I made a great sale. No, I did not wear mine around school. It's been hanging on a wall in my old bedroom for the last 10 years in pristine condition.

Every fall, I contemplated selling it to make some money and to get rid of it, but every fall, I either forgot or couldn't bring myself to sell it. There was too much sentimentality behind it because it was completely my own handiwork.

My handmade senior mum.

During junior year, my homecoming date was from another school. He and I had agreed not to do the mum and garter stuff with each other. We were going together just to have a date for the dance and to hang out with our friends. Well, being the girly girl I was, (and still am at heart,) I bought my own mum that year from the drill team moms and paid for it with my own money. I also bought some craft things and put together a last minute garter for him anyway even though we said we weren't going to do that. It wasn't my finest handiwork, but you know, for someone who thought he wasn't getting a garter, I think he was pleasantly surprised to have gotten one after all. I'm sure it's long been in the trash for years since that night.

For senior year, my homecoming date was yet again from another school. He and I had again agreed not to do the mum and garter stuff with each other. We were, once again, going together just to have a date for the dance and to hang out with our friends. And once again, being the girly girl I was, I wanted my own mum - because let's face it, the silver and white ones are so much more "elegant" than the maroon and white ones, if you can even call glitter, ribbon, and plastic "elegant."

But, I was going to make my own. Being a year wiser than I was the previous year and more intuitive, I figured out how to assemble all these seemingly useless pieces of craft materials they sell at Hobby Lobby and Michael's into something rather beautiful. My favorite part was the mum base. I creatively designed my own pattern and put it together with some of the more expensive glitter ribbons.

My mum base.

The trickiest part to making beautiful mums which I discovered in my own experience is how to embellish and hide the staples and glue. Everyone can take hot glue and glue a cow bell onto a piece of ribbon, or tie a cow bell onto a string and hang it off the mum. But how many people can DIY hide the charm hole at the top of the cow bell with something beautiful? (Also considering that mums are most often made by boys for girls with high expectations, chances are slim to none that they have any idea how to do this; hence, The Mum Shop in Plano has such lucrative business for only operating 3 months of the year.)

Someone out there will be Class of 2019...how
convenient: I only had to change one sticker.

17-year-old me figured that out, and I had a lot of fun making my own bows and ribbon embellishments to hide the charm holes, staples, and hot glue.

Made my own deluxe loops, and my own
ribbon braid on the right.

Cleverly concealed the top of the bell
beneath a decorative ribbon.

It was still very bittersweet and a bit sad when I handed away my mum to the lady who was picking it up. Granted, I would much rather have the cash than my mum hanging in my room, but I'm still sentimental at heart and I will miss my fine handiwork from 10 years ago. Also I'm pretty sure she will take apart my mum and simply use it for pieces to make another one. But I'm thankful I was able to sell it for cash than simply throw it away in the trash. Perhaps my legacy will live on anonymously through someone else's mum, at least for one year.

Just for kicks and giggles, I went online to The Mum Shop and created a mum order for something comparable to mine (number of charms, number of ribbons, etc.) to see how much it would cost to buy. I paid quite a bit less than what they're charging. Here are the numbers:

In my opinion, mums these days have gotten so large and so flashy that they're gaudy. I think they're actually more beautiful and elegant when they don't weigh 20 pounds and cover the entire girl whom it adorns. But I digress.

I did, however, remember to remove one detail from my mum. Years ago when I was preparing to hang my mum in my room, I needed a large needle or safety pin to hang it up on the pushpin. The only thing I could think of to use was a pearl pin I had kept in my music box. Before selling it and giving it away, I switched out the pearl pin with one of my many safety pins I've amassed from shopping at baby consignments. (I probably could have handed it to her without anything and it would have been fine, but I was trying to make it more marketable.) 

Why such a big fuss over such a small pin? It's the pin from my corsage from my mother's funeral.

In about sixteen years, I'll hopefully be able to pull up this blog post and share with my daughter about my old Homecoming mum and how much fun I had making it and how special it was for me. 

Goodbye, mum. I'll miss you.

The Shopping Cart Conundrum

I took my daughter with me to the dentist today. She sat quietly in her car seat carrier in the corner as I got my teeth cleaned. The last 10 minutes or so she became a little fussy, but overall she was very good - everyone said she was super cute, very aware, and healthy-looking. Why, yes, if I don't say so myself.

After finishing up at the dentist, I really wanted to go grocery shopping next door because I'd put off shopping for groceries for about 10 days and we were down to eating rice and beans, frozen chicken nuggets, and deli sandwiches. I've always loved the fact that my dentist's office was next to a grocery store I frequent, albeit it's up to 40 minutes away from my house.

I didn't have the stroller caddy with me in my trunk today because it ended up in my husband's car so I figured I'd plop her in a shopping cart and grab the few items I needed:

- 2 onions
- 5 pouches of baby food
- 2 cartons of strawberries
- 1 bag of carrots (1lb)
- 1 bag of potatoes (5lb)
- 1 container of yogurt

Doesn't seem like much, right? Usually, this would be no problem for a basket and I'd hold the bag of potatoes in my other hand. Well, when your baby in the car seat in the cart takes up 100% of the base of the shopping cart, and there's no room left to flip out the little part at the front that usually your child would sit in (but she can't safely sit with only a lap belt yet), you need to leave empty-handed or get creative very quickly.

I piled stuff around her feet being careful not to crush her toes. I put some items above the hood of her carrier, and anything else I held in my hands to the checkout line.

After checking out, I piled the few bags of groceries on the bottom level of the cart where you would normally put your heavy items - cases of soda, water, larger boxes, etc. Carefully, I pushed her out of the store, being extra cautious when pushing her over the threshold at the sliding door entrance. Well, I was doing great until I went to go down the accessibility ramp (which I learned in college is mandatory for all buildings/stores/places to have a ramp for handicap accessibility, or in this case, mothers pushing strollers or grocery shopping carts) and the ramp had ridges. Dundundundun went the cart, and of course the vibrations jiggled my precariously placed bags on the bottom level of the cart off onto the ground.

So here I was, diaper backpack on my back, purse over my shoulder slowly slipping down, holding the cart so it wouldn't roll away into the street with my precious baby, attempting to bend over to grab all the spilled items, and hoping nobody is behind me trying to exit the store because I am smack in the middle of their way.

Would you believe me if I said it wasn't the first time this has happened? It's not.

So this is my life: teaching piano part time, raising a baby, and wondering if there's actually going to be any room in my shopping cart for the groceries.

"Mommy, stop crowding my personal space."