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Lots of celebrations at our house today:
Betty is 8 months old today.
This requires no formal festivities, but lots of hugs and kisses, and exclamations of how fast time flies.
Oscar is 2 years old today.
This requires cupcakes and balloons and about 50 rounds of Happy-Birthday-to-Oscar sung throughout the day. We’ll also celebrate with friends at Singing Time this morning.
Design Mom Blog is 6 months old today.
This requires nothing formal but is a great excuse to take inventory. A few stats as of this minute:
-According to Technorati, there are 145 links from 77 blogs to Design Mom.
-According to Tracksy, the highest number of unique hits Design Mom has received in one day is: 675
-According to BlogTopSites, Design Mom Blog is ranked number 33 out of 336 registered Parenting Blogs.
-According to Blogger, I have published 386 entries.
-According to Me, this continues to be a really happy thing in my life.
Thank you to everyone who reads Design Mom, to everyone who has linked to me, to everyone who has asked a Design Mom Question, to everyone who has left a comment. I look forward to the next 6 months — I hope you’ll stick with me!
2017 Update: It’s been 10 years since I wrote this post, but our holiday journal is still going strong. With so many writers in the house, the reports get longer and longer each year. (Which is wonderful!) A delightful part of our holidays has become looking back at earlier reports and remembering together. I highly recommend this tradition. It’s easy, stress-free, low-cost (or free if you have a spare journal), doesn’t take much time, and provides huge satisfaction. Start this year! P.S. — Beautiful leather journal.
Here are pics of the party favors from the Christmas recital.
I used mulling spices from The Mills Company. The tin can was nice, but I didn’t love the label, so I used the berry imagery I loved from the invitations to repackage.
I wasn’t totally positive about numbers, so I wrapped up lovely soaps from Honey Hill Farm as back-up in case I ran out of mulling spices.





I LOVE our annual Christmas Recital. It started when we were pretty newly married, and it occurred to us how many of our friends happened to be excellent musicians, so why not host a Christmas party where everyone performs? The trained musicians perform something impressive and the rest of us perform something. Else. There has been a banjo. There has been an accordian. There was a reading featuring things overheard while window shopping in the city. And another reading of David Sedaris. There was a choreographed dance involving a dog and santa hat. There was a rap. There is usually lots of group singing, because if you haven’t come prepared, you get to pick a carol for everybody to sing together.
It is wonderful to see friends show off talents I never knew existed. And because I’m not an exclusive sort of person, we try to host it as close to Christmas as possible. That way, we can invite everybody who might be remotely interested — way more people than we can actually fit into the house — knowing that half of them will end up leaving town for the holidays.
We’ve held it every year but last year, when I was too darn morning sick to care. And this year, for the first time, we are holding the recital at a wonderful friend’s house, because it’s outgrown our own clumsy space.
Ben and I always give the first performance. We’re pretty bad, but we try to do a real piece — something involving some harmony. Even though we practice, our performance is usually unimpressive. This (hopefully) gives the party a well-if-they-can-stumble-through-that-performance-our-song-will-be-a-piece-of-cake feel.
I’m so looking forward to this party. And so delighted Julie and Bill offered to host it in their beautiful home.

