Teens » Hip to be Mom

The floor is back!

Posted by Clairity Comments Off

Sep 132011

The girls have been busy over the weekend with something they’ve been saying they will do but never got around to. A long overdue task that’s been repeatedly thrown on the back burner. No time. Too much homework. Don’t want to spoil the weekend. Tests coming up. I’ll do it during the holidays. Sound familiar?

Well, lightning struck and suddenly they found the inspiration to clean their room! Yay!

Skye cleared out a chest of drawers containing her long forgotten treasures and stationery collection. Raine threw out old high school books and papers from the dumping ground in the corner. We rearranged a couple of things around the room, vacuumed the place and voila!

We can finally see the floor!

Do we really have that much floor space? Hmm, I was wondering where it’s been.

Do you talk to your teens?

Posted by Clairity 10 Responses »

Aug 252011

If you have ~~a bunch of~~ two teens in the house, there’s no shortage of activity and chatter and I get to hear a lot of stuff that other moms probably don’t get to hear because, well, (I’m told by reliable sources) many moms don’t talk to their teens.

Which is really sad, if you ask me, but that’s the reality these days. Too busy with work. Too busy with life. Too busy making time for themselves. The parents of one of Raine’s friends frequently leave her home alone when they travel on romantic getaways, sans kids.

Many parents (and I’m not judging here) seem to find it easier just to buy their teens a car, shove a wad of cash into their hands and unleash their teens to do whatever it is they want to do with their friends and they (the parents) don’t want to know. And I think this is the recipe for teens getting into trouble!

We tend to look at teens and think, oh, they’re so big and tall now, surely they’re old enough to take care of themselves. Although they do look very much like adults, they still need your guidance which frequently involves listening, setting limits and knowing what is happening in their lives.

Me? I’ve got all day and I love talking to my kids and listening to everything from their excitement to their struggles to their love for funny tshirts. Of course, when I say talking, I also mean listening. It’s quite the adventure.

Steev’s away at college but I still talk to him every day, sometimes for up to 5 hours a day. Crazy, I know. How do we find so much to talk about? But yeah! We’ve enjoyed our mother-son talks since he was old enough to speak and turn cartwheels on the computer!

And with the girls, of course, we’re constantly chatting in the car. From simple things like what/where to eat, what color nail varnish to wear…� to the big ones like so what’s my college major going to be (okay, let’s see, we’re still scratching our heads on this question!)

So how often do you talk to your kids/teens and what do you talk about?

Going bananas

Posted by Clairity 14 Responses »

Aug 082011

This is our third baking weekend in a row. The girls are really getting the hang of it and we decided to be bold and bake a banana cake this time.

Now and then, we do buy the occasional commercial banana cake with the artificial flavoring and sugar overkill. But enough of that. We’re baking our own, or at least making this our first attempt at banana cake, and if all goes well, we may open a bakery down the street , just kidding.

Okay, on with the good stuff…

1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking soda
4 ripe bananas, mashed
2/3 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup chopped almonds (you can use walnuts if you like)

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars till light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time.

Add in the bananas. We used Dole, I think they’re sweeter maybe. Everything went well up to this point. This is where we got clever and tossed in an extra banana . Clearly a case of going bananas with the bananas!

Then in another bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Add flour mixture, then buttermilk to the creamed mixture, alternating between the two. Stir in chopped almonds.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes or until done. The end result is this moist banana cake. Looks pretty good, huh? For a first attempt, I mean.

Actually it doesn’t taste too bad either and my girls love it. We would so make this again. Just a couple of things I would do differently next time – reduce the sugar because well, the bananas themselves are naturally sweet, and avoid that banana overkill which I’m thinking, might’ve contributed to the slight sogginess in the final product.

So can we consider this a success? Oui?

Yeah, I definitely think so. It looks, smells and tastes like the real thang. So goodbye, store-bought banana cake?

Sunday Shopping – Fruity slip-on shoes for girls

Posted by Clairity 2 Responses »

Jul 312011

My girls are not the only ones who heart Vans shoes. I do too. My kids only wear covered shoes when we go out, rarely flip-flops or open-toed shoes. They either wear sneakers with socks or slip-ons like these which are really great because they’re so easy to put on and take off.

We bought a few pairs of Vans when we were vacationing in CA last winter. Their designs are decidedly funky and comfy for hot weather wear. It’s a shame we didn’t see these colorful fruity slip-ons then, or we would’ve bought them all . These brilliant colors and designs are almost good enough to eat.

Watermelon Slip-On for Girls

Banana Split Slip-On for Girls

Tory for Girls

If you want to get your girls some of these cute shoes for the summer, you can enjoy free ground shipping on orders of $85 or more at Vans simply by entering the code – BTS85 – at checkout. Offer ends pretty soon, August 1, 2011.

And we made chocolate chip cookies

Posted by Clairity 6 Responses »

Jul 292011

So Skye’s finally gotten tired of her store-bought recess food. My kids don’t eat food from the school canteen. From day one, I’ve had them bring food from home although most of the time, I have to admit they’re store-bought cookies and such.

Anyhoo, Skye decided it’s time to pamper herself with homemade recess food… and so she and Raine helped me make these amazing chocolate chip cookies.

First cream together

1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg

Skye did most of the work creaming the mixture but here’s Raine, our diva with her Batman-themed fingernails, taking over for a while so Skye could snap a picture.

Add the dry ingredients and continue mixing till the dough comes together.

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (someone added extra chips when I wasn’t looking )

Raine did most of the work of plopping spoonfuls of the dough on a baking tin.

Bake at 375 degrees F for 10-15 minutes. Our kitchen quickly smelled like chocolate heaven and even Tyson, our little beagle with the big appetite, ran round in circles wagging his tail hoping to catch a treat.

Well, here they are, the chocolate chip cookies that came out of the oven. So so good that if fingers could drool, I’m sure they would .

This weekend, we’re making ourselves a carrot cake, and a few more batches of chocolate chip cookies to give away. Pretty excited about that.

What are you up to this weekend? Any baking in your plans?

Who you talkin’ to?

Posted by Clairity 14 Responses »

Jul 092011

So Skye and I stopped by the grocery store after dropping Raine off at college. For some strange reason, grocery shopping is starting to become a bit of a drag for me. So I try to do the quick and dirty and I’m out of there.

To speed things up, the girls and I will usually split up so we can run around, grab stuff, toss them into the cart, then race off to checkout. Oftentimes I would walk ahead to look for something on my list and one of the girls would be close behind with the cart.

That’s what we were doing earlier this week. Skye was pushing the cart a ways behind me as I speed-walked down the aisle looking for my canned tuna. Or so I thought.

“Where’s my tuna? I can’t find it. Um, where can it be? Oh no, I think maybe it’s sold out again…”

I was carrying on quite the conversation and rather loudly too, thinking Skye was nearby. Instead Skye was standing at the far end of the aisle engrossed in her ipod touch 8 gb. But there was a woman right beside me who probably thought I was nuts !

Has something like this happened to you before? What embarrassing things have you done in public?