For those of you who like tangible organization tools (as opposed to software), and you’re tired of the same old Day Runners, Day-Timers, Franklin Coveys, etc, this post’s for you. I’ve been looking at day planners recently, both because of a request to cover them here and the growing realization that the combination of two small children, a part-time office job, ongoing freelance assignments, and a swirling maelstrom of doctor’s appointments/errands/grocery lists/home and garden projects/ET-BLEEPING-CETERA is resulting in what you might call a need for improved personal productivity on my end.

Ahem. So, planners! Preferably interesting and/or unique ones! Let’s check them out: Read the rest of this entry »

There were some questions on my first post. Let’s chat!

1. Are you and Linda S. the same person? No. Linda and I also work together on her site SundryBuzz.

2. Where are the cute Target earrings?? Hidden by my hair.

3. Are these your kids’ real names now, or still the pseudonyms you use on your Swistle blog? Still pseudonyms. Those are their middle names.

4. You are so pretty! I thought you’d be fatter! Thanks! But I AM fatter. When I was choosing a photo from the few hundred I took, I wasn’t thinking, “How can I get a picture that accurately represents my age/fatness, and do you suppose they’d let me include a supplementary shot that shows my stretch marks and saggy tum area?” No, I was thinking, “How can I get a picture that makes people say, “You are so pretty! I thought you’d be fatter”? If I could have gotten away with posting a photo of Drew Barrymore, I would have.

Here’s a photo I rejected. I may not be sixteen, but here I look FIFTY-FIVE (I see my fuuuuuu-turrrrrrre!) and like I’m married to a politician. (Whatever I’m doing there with my expression/posture to make those saggy folds, I am never doing it again.) But you CAN see my cute Target earrings:

(Swistle, age 55)

(cute Target earring)

Or here’s one where I have my hair tucked behind my ears, which is what I do within 2 seconds of styling it in the morning because it drives me crazy to have hair touching my face. This is how my hair actually looks as I go about my day. But I did not want Hair Accuracy, I wanted Hair Awesomeness. And what is that I doing with my facial expression? Am I simpering? Also: jawline. Also: FOREHEAD. Also: the rounded shoulders of a person who reads and writes rather than going out into the healthful fresh air.

Or how about this one? DORK MUCH??

Also consider: You know that diet I’ve been boring riveting you with over on the Swistle blog for over 2 months now? I was not lying to you when I said it has been going well. You BETTER tell me I look skinny, because I have given up a LOT of brownies!

5. What are your skin secrets? More on this another time!

6. Is your mother-in-law going to find you online now? My name is common enough that I think it’s unlikely. But I try to follow Linda’s advice of assuming other people WILL find it. (I don’t do a very good job, but I try.)

7. How did you come up with the name “Swistle”? Boring story: My family calls me Swis, which comes from a childhood mispronunciation of my name. When I needed a blogging pseudonym, I added various end-sounds until I came up with one I liked. Voila! “Swistle”!

8. Is it okay if I still call you Swistle? PLEASE DO. I think of MYSELF as Swistle now!

Did I miss anything?

Next up: SHORTER POST.

Until today, I’ve done all my Internet writing as Swistle, She Who Must Not Be Photographed. And today I am writing as Kristen, and my picture is up there in the banner. I feel a little exposed. Naked. Well, not naked. Bikini’d.

Kristen (not actually in bikini)

So, hi! There I am, with a new haircut because when I found out I was going to have my picture here, I called my stylist within 15 minutes and got an appointment for the next day. And then I took five thousand photos until I got one where a lucky shadow made my jawline look sharp. I took the photo of myself, and my mom says there’s a “fish-eye effect” that makes my nose and forehead look more prominent than they are in real life. Well, fine, but my husband was never going to be patient enough to take the five thousand photos required to find the lucky-shadow one, and I’ll gladly take “illusion of prominent nose and forehead” if I can get “illusion of sharp jawline.”

I’m in my mid-thirties, and my jawline is soft. I’ve been married to my husband Paul for ten years. We have five children: Rob, a third-grader; William, a first-grader; twins Elizabeth and Edward, nearly 3 years old; and Henry, 11 months.

With each additional child, it has become more apparent to me that there are a lot of right ways to do things, and that the current right way can change not only from parent to parent, but from child to child and from day to day. I think pooling ideas is a great way to find the ones that work for you and the ones that work for me—and the ones that work with whatever kid is currently giving us forehead wrinkles in addition to the soft jawline.

I look forward to picking your brains for every last idea you’ve ever had BWAH HA HA! pooling ideas here with you.

(Hey, Swistle readers! Are you surprised?)

So Mother’s Day is coming up, traditionally the time of year when lots of women secretly hope for amazingly thoughtful gifts from their spouses and receive . . . well, it’s the thought that counts, right? My own husband has a poor track record with this holiday, one year claiming that it didn’t ‘make any sense’ to get me anything until our son was old enough to pick it out.

(Aw, sweetie, guess what else doesn’t make sense? HAVING SEX AGAIN EVER.)

I don’t lust too heavily after gifts consisting of little blue Tiffany boxes because to be honest, I’d rather have a whole crapload of Amazon gift certificates so I can buy all the makeup, comic books, and DVDs that I want. However, ’tis the season to talk jewelry, so I thought I’d run down some of the top ticket traditional sparkly-things, and see what you think about them:
Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know about you, but in my house almost all the gift-giving strategies fall on my shoulders, regardless of the occasion. So if you’re in a similar boat, and you maybe have a hard-to-shop for relative to consider this Mother’s Day, here are just a couple ideas for gifts that fall outside the “lovely framed picture of the grandchildren” spectrum (although frankly, those are the easiest and probably best-received ones):

Read the rest of this entry »

I was thinking about brand loyalty recently because I noticed that while I love Bumble & bumble hair products, I tend to buy all sorts of random shampoos. I have a stack of them in my shower ranging from fancypants expensive salon varieties to good old drugstore cheapskate brands. My basic requirement on shampoo is that it needs to smell good, I guess — I’ve never really noticed that one makes a major difference over another.

Skin care’s another story, though. I am officially fussy about the stuff I use on my face, and fiercely loyal to one particular brand, who I swear is not paying me to say so: philosophy.

I’ll admit I’m kind of a sucker for their great packaging and the fragrance of their line (lots of lavender), but I also think their stuff just . . . works. Awesomely. My favorite items:
Read the rest of this entry »

My maternity leave is drawing to an end, and I am both dreading and anticipating returning to work, if that makes any sense. There are things I’m really looking forward to: being around other adults, working on projects, and having an ongoing reason to get dressed before noon a few days a week. But of course I’ll miss being around the kids, especially since Dylan has officially entered the Adorable Cooing Phase of babyhood.

At any rate, when I get back to work at the start of May I’ll need to update some of the family photos I’ve got in my office. I mean, now there’s a whole new child to proudly display. Plus, I’d like to spruce things up in general — my workplace had just moved to a new building before I went on leave, so my office is kind of drab since I hadn’t bothered to personalize it much before leaving it empty for twelve weeks.

Do you have any cool ideas for spiffing up a workspace, and including items that remind you of your family? I’d love to hear them! Here are a few things I’ve been looking at:
Read the rest of this entry »

After my first son was born I remember reading a parenting book that was supposed to be a collection of tips and tricks from Real Parents Just Like You, except the advice it contained had a real pod-person feel to it and I questioned the legitimacy of contributors like “Anne, mother of 7″ who suggested that dry oatmeal was a fun sensory stimulator for young children. “Just fill a box or plastic tub, and let the good times roll!” Sure, maybe a mother of seven has nothing better to do than vacuum a metric crapload of oatmeal out of every crevice in her house, but somehow I doubt it.

I’d rather read a collection of suggestions that address real-world issues, and “My children do not have nearly enough Quaker products crammed in their bodily cavities” isn’t really a concern I’ve experienced. I still consider myself a mouth-breathing amateur at this motherhood business, but here are a few of the tips I’ve learned over the last couple years, should anyone be in the market for creating a new oatmeal-free book:

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I think the best investment I’ve made towards my work/life balance has to be the laptop I bought last year. Now instead of being tied to a desktop, I can quickly get some work done from wherever I need to be, whether that’s the living room sofa during naptime, the kitchen counter while I’m cooking dinner and jiggling a baby in the front carrier, or the local Starbucks (a lifesaver since being home on maternity leave; sometimes a person just needs to get the HELL out of Dodge, even if it’s just to get more work done).

Although I mostly use my MacBook around the house, for the times I do take my computer on the road I think I’d like a more travel-friendly bag that what I currently have. I’m pretty sure I’m going to upgrade to a current MacBook Pro this year, and I definitely want to make sure I keep it in good shape while still being able to comfortably tote it from Point A to Point B.

Laptop bags are sort of fun to shop for, like diaper bags they can run the spectrum from utilitarian to fancy purselike options. With my own personal criteria of wanting something at least somewhat rugged, comfortable, and sporty/funky in design, here’s a few I’ve been looking at lately:
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The other day I was giving the kids a bath and I realized I’d forgotten their kid-specific gentle no-tears infant-and-toddler-safe liquid soap in the other bathroom. So I washed them both with my Philosophy “Cinnamon Roll” bubble bath, and while I don’t recommend this course of action (it surely isn’t meant for 8-week-old babies), they smelled SO GOOD afterwards. Such a nice change from the Sour Milk/Hint O’ Poo combo they had going on beforehand.

I don’t normally share my own spendy bath items with the children (I mean, for one, they totally don’t appreciate the fine sensation of a quality bodywash), but I definitely tend to bogart their own hygiene-related products for household use. It’s nice to know all that money you’re dumping into the bottomless Kid Stuff Bucket can go to more than one purpose, you know?

Here’s a brief list of some products and their various uses, feel free to add your own in the comments section:
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