Meredith over at Perfection Pending, posted a wonderfully heartfelt post yesterday about the need to find the joy in the moment with kids.  About the need to let go; slow down; and “breathe in the little people they are right now.”

Really?  She had me at let go; slow down; and breathe.  But the stuff about reflecting on spending time with my kids was good too.

Lastly, Jany Ceresh’s post Budget?  I Thought you said Fudge it?  from Wednesday rang true for me this week.  She posts about money, and making it all work with four kids.  Two of which have been through twelve new pairs of jeans between them in the last month.  I don’t have those sorts of jean requirements, but between daycare, mortgage, car loans, groceries and general living, the young, carefree days of disposable income are behind us.

But let’s move this along to:

What I Watched

Okay, given the last post, I’ve totally been humming this for the last few days:

And then, I take a moment, remember my life is actually quite wonderful, relocate my perspective, and enjoy this video:

Finally, one of my favourite bloggers started a link up this week that I sadly didn’t manage to join.  She was asking people to post about happy.  I wasn’t really in the right head space this week for a whole post of happy.  If it helps for insight, Love the Way you Lie came on the radio on the way home from work today and I cranked it up, rocked out, and then gave pause to what my level of identification  … with Rihanna (Step Right Up! Stand there and watch me burn!) … might mean about my current ability to effectively keep up on the hamster wheel of my life.  But for Suzie, in honour of the inaugural theme and with every wish of success for an amazing new weekly event which I promise to participate in, I post this last video:

What I Wrote

Why so busy, you ask?  To busy to find the happy, you ask?

Meh.  Dunno.

Either way, here’s what I wrote this week:

On Monday, I posted about finding me some of Ethan Rayne’s [sidebar: I’m pretty stoked he has a Wikipedia page!] fictional demonic band candy from Season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1998) so I could have a good excuse to take a vacation from responsibility for a little while.  Mostly?  I’d just like to chill out with Giles for a while and listen to some vinyl.

Tuesday I linked up with Jackie’s new A to Z Music Hop over at Ambling and Rambling and – reflecting on my obvious need to escape from something – expanded on that self-indulgent theme with five songs outlining All I Need.

Then Wednesday, I joined up with Cee’s Photography’s Share Your World and talked about relaxing to Depeche Mode while breathing underwater in Spanish and living in Clementsport (or something like that, the week’s a bit of a blur).

Finally, spurred on by the WordPress 201 Challenge, I put together and published a Best of Baby Gates Down Page.  Do check it out and let me know what you think!

What I Made

Bringing us all back full circle to my first link – that would be the WordPress 201 Broadcasting Your Brand Post, I spent some time thinking about branding; decided (given my header) that dollies kinda work with my life stage; spent some time searching free dolly images; getting acquainted with PicMonkey; and made the following four buttons to link to my various social media that now are all featured on my sidebar (along with the credits):

Then, tangentially in line with some of the subsequent assignments (ie: thinking about my blog outside my blog), I started a doll collection on Pinterest:

Suffice to say, that after a few days surfing Pinterest dolly boards, I’ve discovered I have a ways to go if I want to establish myself as knowing ANYTHING about dolls.  Apparently having been a girl and now having two of my own – all of whom like dolls – is just the tip of the dolly iceberg.  It’s a brave new world in miniature out there (predominantly on Etsy and Flickr).  I may start a coffee board to support this new habit…