Tag: Usborne Books

You can’t spell #momlife without MLM.

Published on by Darlene Dee3 Comments

So, are you on Team OMG Stahp or Team They Are Just Trying to Make a Living. Which, come on, we all know is actually Team WE Are Just Trying to Make a Living.

Love them or hate them (or just try to avoid them), if you are a mom these days you will def meet another mom hoping to sell you something. If you’re lucky. If you are not lucky, you will meet another mom that immediately acts like your bff until BAM out of the nowhere on the the third (play)date gives you the hard sell about joining their team.

I get it. Back in ye olde 1900s, my mom sold Avon, Mary Kay, and The Almighty Tupperware. I STILL keep my cereal fresh with hand-me-down vintage Tupperware. Because Tupperware is legit awesome. Many of today’s popular MLM companies are slinging awesome things. (Overpriced, of course. But awesome.) I love me some essential oils and children’s books and vegetable gummies and fancy face creams.

I will go to your parties. I might even host one because I like you and I like wine. BUT DON’T TRY TO TRICK ME. If our friendship depends on my purchases, I hate you.

I have one friend that I knew for OVER A YEAR before I knew that she sold essential oils. She actually never told me. A mutual friend had a handmade potion in her bag labeled Liquid Xanax so of course I had to ask what THAT was all about. (It was not in fact black market benzos. It was lavender and chamomile and mildly disappointing.) This essential oil MLMer is very successful and never annoys her friends.

I know the other kind of people too. I don’t like them as much.

You know who are the chillest MLMers on the block, though? The super sweet shillers of Usborne Books! Be chill must be like the first, third, seventh, and last bullet point in the Training at Usborne. I have four friends now that sell Usborne in various parts of the country. If I am available, I will always attend their virtual Facebook parties. Recently I have attended parties to the tune of $21.97 and $69.94. You can see which friend I like better. KIDDING! My book purchasing is directly correlated with my wine consumption.

tl;dr: I will buy your MLM stuff if you promise to shut up about it.

RAISING BABYSTAR: $28,784.36

 

 

Boxing Day.

Published on by Darlene Dee3 Comments

I hope you had a very merry Christmas, if you celebrate Christmas. Or are in the midst of a happy Hanukkah, if you celebrate Hanukkah. Or are enjoying a nice British Boxing Day, if you know what that is. And if you do, please tell me, because even Wikipedia is vague on the origins of Boxing Day. It’s either an extended Christmas (brilliant why didn’t we think of that!) or a Black Friday type situation. Either way, it sounds groovy.

I like to celebrate Boxing Day by removing boxes from my living room.

Christmas was bittersweet at my house. Babystar is here, of course, but the Teenager is visiting Florida where the College Boy now lives. So I only had one of my little chickens here on Christmas morning.

And I am super mean and am making the Teenager wait until she gets home to open her gifts. Or am I really awesome and creating a second Christmas in January? Yes. That one.

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Santa brought a LION. As requested. And Babystar is terrified of the lion. He does look super scary tbh. Lion is currently living in the basement working as a guard lion in front of the work bench. So far, Babystar just likes to talk about her lion and growl and sometimes go wave at him. Someday they may become roommates but it’s definitely not happening in 2016. (Santa, what have you done? Whoops.)

How does Santa work at your house? Santa never wraps gifts here. He’s far too busy. And he only brings one special gift. But I am told that he has different arrangements with other good little boys and girls. What’s yours?

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Also, we do the Somethings you Want, Need, Wear & Read deal. Christmas gifts were getting out of had so I had to stop the madness somehow. This seems to work. Except Babystar can’t count or understand this year so I wrapped up some extra things for her. For example, the dinosaur magnets and hammer toy have been hiding under brown paper in a box in the living room for weeks. I bought them when I bought her Buckle Bear (oh yeah, I’ll tell you later) because of an awesome sale and made them available in case anyone needed a tantrum distraction during this past month of skipped naps and added sugar. But they were still in that box when I was wrapping presents the other day so under the tree they went! The Ikea hammer set has been in the top of her closet forever because I bought it for my nephew but forgot to give it to him the last time he was here and it says 18 months so I thought he was too old for it now (but Ikea lied and I am once again putting it back at the top of her closet until she is ready) so under the tree it went! I just realized I gave Babystar two hammers for Christmas. Oh, well. Jesus was a carpenter, right? Hammers are totally Christmas-y.

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2016 tally (not all are pictured above and some of her gifts were from other people’s bank accounts):

  • Lion $59.99  (Santa always makes us pay!)
  • wooden bus, airplane, helicopter, extra people  $73.95
  • Melissa & Doug hammer toy (in picture) and dinosaur magnets $30.08
  • Three Usborne books $34.17 (a friend had a party this fall)
  • Re-play plates (and snack containers that didn’t get wrapped) $20.14
  • Dinosaur pajamas above were added to tally in previous post
  • Ikea toolset $7.99

Her Christmas haul was meant to be Something she Wants (wooden vehicles and yes she looooves them), Needs (more plates), Wears (pajamas), and Reads (books). The others snuck under the tree but I’ll be more strict next year, I promise. Probably. Otherwise, she might start to notice and then want extra presents in ten years when everything is holograms and hover boards.

RAISING BABYSTAR: $14,072.21