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Home Renovation – Take 2

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We bought an older home and had been doing a lot to update it. Then the Great Recession hit. When that ended, we started having a family.

GreatRecessionPowerRanger
Wasn’t quite this bad, but it felt like it some days.

When we bought our home, we’d planned to be in five to seven years then buy a larger home and start a family. But the Great Recession happened, and I took a 40% pay cut just to keep my job. I’m the primary income in our home, so it was an especially rough time.

Shortly after the Great Recession, we started our family. Those of you with children are not surprised home improvement projects were all but completely ignored during this time.

 But the girls are getting older. We’ve considered moving, but things with my husband’s career are in flux, so we thought it best to limit the amount of chaos if at all possible. That means staying in our current home.

I am not good at interior design. Color and how it works eludes me. I’ve tried hiring some interior designers, but none want to work with a limited budget. So, I’m trying to tackle it myself.

RetiredToile
Whatever toile is.

To make the projects easier and more doable, I’m starting with my oldest daughter’s room. She’s at the cusp age where she’s no longer a preschooler, but she’s not a teen, either. She wants a Zelda room, because of course she does. Couldn’t be anything easy like Frozen or something.

 Neither my husband or I are very handy, so we’re going to be hiring contractors as needed to try to avoid the worst mishaps.

OneJob
I could see me totally doing this.

But after ten years, the house needs to be updated. We’re going to start in one room and go from there.

 Wish me luck! I’m going to need it!

 Have you ever tackled this kind of project? If so, *please* share any tips and pointers!

Zelda Breath of the Wild Costume

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I’ve learned my lesson on waiting until the last minute to get Halloween costumes. Don’t do it. Start early. Get what they want.

Sure, they might change their mind as you get closer to the day, but that’s when you can point to their closet of dress-up clothes and the costume you bought and say choose.

We went to a super hero birthday party earlier this summer, and DD1 loved her Super Girl costume. I was hoping this meant Halloween was going to be a slam dunk this year. I figured I’d get her some blue leggings to go underneath the skirt, and some long underwear to wear under the costume and the leggings and we’d be set.

pumpkins
Halloween where I live.

So, I broach the subject with her, thinking this was going to be an easy Halloween.

Stop laughing.

She says she likes her Super Girl costume, but she really wants to be Zelda from the game she plays with DH. Specifically, she wants to be the Zelda in the blue dress. I figure this is a new and very popular game, how hard this can be.

zeldabluedress
Screenshot from the game. This dress. Yeah. Not the easy blue tunic and pants Link has on.

I can hear you laughing harder. Stop it.

I head over to Amazon, and while there are so many Link costumes out there that you can’t count them all, there are NO Zelda costumes. Not in the blue dress she wears at the castle. Not the blue riding outfit she wears through most of the story cut scenes. Not the white ceremonial dress that she wears as her kingdom is destroyed.

None of them.

Okay, Amazon failed me. That never happens. But there are other places.

I check Target, Costume Express, Walmart, Halloween Costumes.

Nothing.

I delve deeper into the depths of the internet, going to places like CJCosplay and Miccostumes. While I can find the adult version of the Zelda costume, I can find nothing for little girls.

I go back to DD and ask her if she’d be willing to go as Zelda dressed in Link’s champion’s tunic. She can pretend to be the hero saving link. No, she doesn’t want to look like a boy.

Grating at the social pressure my daughter’s already succumbed to, I go back to looking.

I check eBay and Etsy. Nothing.

I even send a message to several of the sellers who have the adult women’s costume, but none of them can help me with a kid’s size.

Finally, we turn to my crafty sister who can actually sew. Not my hack job of using some stitch witchery, but I mean really sew. And well. She even had a side business making vintage doll fashion reproductions before her work hours made it impossible to continue.

kathryn
She actually made this.

That outfit up there, she actually made out of some kind of silk. That she lined and did finishing stitches and a bunch of stuff I don’t understand. You know where ALL the crafty went in our family.

Anyway, we show her pictures of the Zelda outfits from the game. After studying them, my sister says the trim will be the hardest part, but even that won’t be bad if we can find a pattern. We head out to Joann to see if we can find a pattern.

After pouring through every pattern book in the store, we find nothing even close. My sister says she could make a pattern for it. It’ll be harder and take longer, but if her niece really wants it, she’ll do it.

Of course her niece really wants it, so we start looking for fabric. This store is huge, and there’s not a bolt of fabric in it that’s even close to the blue Zelda’s wearing.

Resigned, my sister says we might be able to find the fabric on eBay.

At this point, I tell her it’s okay, DD1 will just have to go as something else.

DD1 and I had the “no breath of the wild costume” talk. There were tears, and she was very upset. I even offered to buy her the Elsa costume from the Disney Store, but she wasn’t having it.

Later in the week, DH broke out our ancient Wii and brought out Zelda Twilight Princess. While Zelda isn’t much in that story, DD1 approaches me the next morning. She asks if she can go as the Zelda from Twilight Princess. She says she’d be willing to go this route so she can still be Zelda. Her tenacity will serve her well in the future. Her tenacity will serve her well in the future. Her tenacity (yeah, I keep telling myself this, hoping it’ll make me feel better!).

Tenacity
I can’t find one anywhere!

I sit her down and we look for a costume together, so she can see what’s out there. Not much.

A seller on Etsy has one that’s okay, and there’s a really pitiful looking one with reviews that include the dress tearing in a single wear from several Amazon reviewers.

I can’t find anything else in a child’s size anywhere.

DD1 is upset. She says it’s not fair how many Link costumes there are. Why aren’t there any Zelda ones.

I have no idea.

If Disney can go from Cinderella to Merida and Elsa, why can’t Nintendo give us more Zelda like from Smash Brothers and the corresponding merchandise?

Hey Nintendo, look! Here! I want to give you money.

money-1428594_640

Now make a game with Zelda as the hero and a costume to go with!

 

How about you? Your child ever want to be something for Halloween you just couldn’t do? How did they take the disappointment? How did you deal with it, other than trying to bribe the company to make one?

 

Games: Cooperative vs Competitive

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I never liked games much as a kid. Most of them were boring with little strategy. The ones that did engage some strategy seemed designed to make one person feel awesome for winning and everyone else had be losers.

got
Sums it up nicely. 

So, I avoided games for years. Still don’t like board games, although I’ve since discovered things like D&D that are technically a game but are cooperative and a lot more fun.

My husband has loved board games his whole life, so he really wants our little ones to love games with him. Then, he’ll finally have someone to play with.

He introduced DD1 to Candyland. Which, she promptly cheated at. She got bored quickly because she knew her colors and how to count to two, so DH started trying to make up new rules to help her learn strategy. For example, she could pick two cards instead of one and select whichever card she wanted to play.

This lasted for a little while, but she quickly grew bored of the game. So, he got her My Little Pony chutes and ladders. We all know how much DD1 likes MLP.

Again, her interest lasted for a short while. Her learning curve was well past counting to six (she’s always been precocious), but the real issue was when she started looking at the pictures. She stopped wanting to play the game because she didn’t think the ponies would do all the bad things they were depicted doing to get sent down the slide.

Santa brought her some more games for Christmas, most of which were not terribly interesting to her. She played Guess Who for a while, intrigued by the differences in hair color, costumes, and faces of the people. But after a few months, even that wore off.

Then I stumbled across a game called Hoot Owl Hoot.

hoot

I’d never heard of it, but the premise was intriguing. A cooperative game where children play with their parent on the same side, and in the process, learn more advanced strategy instead of just basic numbers and colors.

I bought it, and it arrived in two days.

My daughter loved it! She would play three or four games of it before getting bored, and you could see her progress with strategy. When we lost, which we sometimes did depending on the difficulty level she chose, we’d say something like, “Those silly owls didn’t make it home before dawn.” Then, we’d set the game up to play again. No tears. Sometimes a little frustration, but never anger. Losing tended to make her just want to try again, with an adult’s help, of course.

This company makes other games as well, and she enjoys most of them. Hoot owl Hoot, though, is a favorite.

Doing a little research told me that she was behaving perfectly normal for a child of her age. Most kids aren’t ready to be okay with losing until they’re at least seven or eight years old. Even then, it can be a tough lesson.

I can see that she has the makings of enjoying games, especially games like Zelda. DH could probably even get her interested in role play games like D&D in a few years. But I think she might have too much of me in her to ever be willing to sit down and play Twilight Imperium.

 

twilightimperium
And this is the express version. The manual is longer than novels I’ve read.

Sorry, honey, she got half my DNA.

 

How about you, do you love board games? Hate them? Do your kids or grandkids like them? Any good ones for precocious preschoolers I should check out?

 

 

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

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Game: Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild

Rated: E for Everyone

Status: Worth Playing

botw.png

You can see more about it here.

Overview

Zelda’s been around since I was a kid, so it was fun to share it with my almost-kindergartner. She loves the game.

I’ve heard it called Skyrim for Zelda, and that’s not an inaccurate description.

 

Pros

  • It’s E for everyone, so the violence is cartoon in nature (think Road Runner or Bugs Bunny).

 

  • Bad Guys – Anything Link kills looks like a monster. These monsters come back alive at the next Blood Moon, so they don’t truly stay dead.

 

  • Not Scary – My daughter can be scared by My Little Pony. There was nothing in this game that truly scared her until we got to Gannon at the end. She would occasionally get frustrated with the puzzles in the game, but that’s okay.

 

  • Puzzles – The puzzles are challenging and thoughtful. Not something DD1 could solve on her own, but it challenged her to come up with ideas as even DH and I weren’t able to solve all of them easily.

 

  • Memories – We all enjoyed collecting “memories” (Link has lost his) and seeing what happened that led up to the post-apocalyptic world you start in. It let us get to see the way Zelda and Link went from an adversarial relationship, to friends, to something much deeper.

 

  • Environment – Environment becomes a factor to consider rather than just a backdrop: skeleton monsters come out of the ground at night, rain makes climbing more difficult, the sun rises and sets, the moon rises and sets, there are phases of the moon, etc. Many of these things actually feature in the gameplay, such as being properly equipped for the freezing mountain temperatures.

 

  • Load Screens– The load screens reasonable in length. Bethesda could learn a few things about this.

 

  • Armor Sets – DD1 loved the fact that Link could change his clothes, and she was very mindful that he didn’t overheat or freeze. These outfits were all upgradable, and really needed to be upgraded as you faced tougher monsters.

 

  • Rewards Worth the Challenge – Some things were always a challenge. Lynells and guardians, for example, are never a cake walk even at end game. You are rewarded for the effort with amazing weapons.

 

Cons

  • Gender Roles – It reinforces traditional gender roles. Zelda is the one who can’t master her power. Zelda is the one who falls crying to the ground. Zelda is the one yelled at by her father. Link is the one that has to save her. Blah. I almost didn’t buy the game because of this. Little girls get enough of this garbage without stuff like this reinforcing it. The game was originally going to feature the ability to choose whether you played Zelda or Link as the hero. I hope they release DLC that allows this. It wouldn’t be that difficult of a change. Not really. And it would let little girls see a girl kicking Bokoblin butt. I’ve tried to convince DD1 to think of Link as a girl, but she’s having none of it. Already. This is why not giving girls the option to play a girl is so awful.

 

  • Graphics – Enough said.
Link20122014
Frankly, the graphics from 2006 Twilight Princess were better.
  • Ending – I won’t spoil the ending, but we were disappointed. Not with the game play, per se, but I wanted the traditional cathartic release you expect at the end of a game. Especially a game this long. I didn’t get it, and I didn’t get to keep playing to finish up all those armor upgrades. Once you defeat Gannon, the whole thing is over even if you haven’t finished exploring. Hoping for a DLC on this where you can have Zelda as a companion and keep investigating the world. Seems wrong to leave the princess in the tower holding Gannon at bay while I explore the expansive world.

 

  • Controls – Unlike Mario Kart that my almost-kindergartener can not only play by herself, but give her father a run for first place, the controls for BOTW (Breath of the Wild) are complex. Even my husband had some issues at times. This was not a game DD1 could play on her own.

 

  • Tedious Upgrades – Some of the clothing upgrades grew tedious. How many times do I really need to camp the dragons to shoot some part of them?

 

  • No Real Story – There main story is pretty sparse, though the memories help. It’s really just: defeat Big Bad or else he will unleash total devastation. No explanation as to why, no character development, not even for Link or Zelda. And there’s clearly a huge opportunity with this with all Zelda has to do to unlock her power. Not even any really good side stories for Link to get involved in as he tries to regain enough strength to defeat Gannon. I suppose this is par for video games, which is really sad. They have the opportunity to do so much more.

 

All in, if you aren’t worried about the gender stereotypes, it’s well worth a play through.

Children and Birthday Parties

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So, last year I waited until the end of September to start thinking about DD1’s birthday. I learned kid’s birthday parties are sorta like weddings. You have to plan them far in advance.

By the time we started, it was far too late for most things, so we ended up hosting it at home.

birthday1

This was extremely stressful, and frankly, the party was only so-so for my daughter and her friends.

October starts my busy season at work. It’s also Halloween, other family members’ birthdays, including immediate family. Yeah, it’s a pretty full month. Let’s just say her party last year was half-baked, but we got away with it because most of the guests were four.

We won’t get that luxury this year, especially as DD1 will be in kindergarten. So, I started planning early.

I’m not Pinterest mom, but we can do better than putting everything together the night before the party. Yeah. We were real organized last year.

amazonmom
So, so true.

So, here’s what I’ve come up with:

 

Dance Birthday

The dance place she dances at hosts children’s birthday parties. They provide an indoor venue (critical as we can have snow in October), and one of the instructors takes care of entertaining the monsters children. They also take care of the invitations, set-up and clean-up.

I’m leaning towards this because I’m really busy already. I bring the birthday child and cake. They do everything else

 

Water Park Birthday

There is a small indoor water park in our area. They offer birthday packages where the kids can play in the pool and on the water slides, then afterward they had a room for the monsters children to eat cake before I send them home.

However, this would mean getting into a swimsuit to help monitor them in the pool. I’d really rather not, but it’s an option.

waterpark1
Not this kind, but I’d like it better!

Other

  • I’ve checked the YMCA, but all kids have to be 6 and older.
  • I asked her about bowling, and she said yuck. Didn’t like the bowling field trip at school and quit after less than one round.

 

As I’m offering the two choices above to my daughter, she proposes a third: an at-home Zelda party.

I squirm. I explain to her that our house is pretty small, she couldn’t have nearly as many friends over.

  • Read: I don’t want to clean and prep for the party. Or clean up afterwards. Or entertain monsters children for two hours.

She says she doesn’t care. She’ll just have fewer friends over. I try again, explaining that not many other children are going to know who Zelda is. She says she doesn’t care, they can come as other princesses.

link1
Not sure why it’s called Zelda when all you ever see is Link.

So, I back off. Maybe we can convince her later if we phrase it right.

We try again at dinner the next day, and I explain that the dance place has themes and she gets to pick the one she wants. She seems pretty happy about doing the party at the dance place and picked the princess theme.

Then, comes an awful, rushed, hectic morning. We’re finally in the car, with everything we need (I’d forgotten something and had to turn around twice), and now DD1 has me again trapped in the car.

You know where this is going. Yeah, like that.

She tells me she really doesn’t want to do a dance party. She really wants a Zelda party at home. I explain again that we can’t have as many friends come if we do the party at home. I explain again that I don’t think her friends will know who Zelda is.

She is undeterred.

She wants a Zelda party.

I told her to think about it. I have a little time yet to make a decision.

She gave me the patented DD1 look and said she’d think about it, but she already told me what she wanted.

*sigh*

How about you? Ever have to throw a child’s birthday party? Any pointers or tips?