Ready? Ok! More Contest Entries

The contest to win Humphrey the Owl is still on! See rules and details here.

Jeremiah has been kept abreast of the contest entries so far...I was able to catch up with him between snowstorms to get this excellent photos (totally unrelated to the contest):



Jules is the 'host' of Out of Tune Idol and also my personal blog idol.

Here is her entry:


I want to mention that Kara from Condi's Hair is on this montage. She's modeling a custom order cabled hat/scarf set and charcoal armwarmers she bought from me earlier this winter. If you're interested in her set or anything on my blog please contact me via email oliverosetree@yahoo.com.

Prosy obviously wants to win Humphrey pretty darn bad...she went to the far extreme and wrote something on toast for me! This girl has some insane talent. INSANE.



If I missed your contest entry, please let me know.

Entries Not Entrails...Contest Updates!

On Friday I posted a contest to win Humphrey The Owl. I have since then been told several times (three times on facebook and three times on blogs) that Humphrey's eyes resemble boobies. This is either going to make people want him less or, as I suspect, want him so much more.

'Boobie Face' Humphrey has been coveted by many and I will be posting contest entries throughout the week.

On Sunday the 14th, Valentines Day, Jeremiah and I will be judging the entries and picking a WINNER!!! If you have posted an entry and I haven't put it on the blog, please let me know in case my broad spectrum telepathy is out of wack.

First is an entry from my only blogging facebook friend (imagine that BECKYS!), Dr. Monkey Muck. He wrote me a haiku that was very sweet, albeit highly inaccurate. I forgive him because of our shared loved for bad vintage sweaters and the ads that those sweaters are featured in:

Knitter, mom, hot babe.
Erin is timeless,
like a mountain spring.

Kim, who is hilarious and probably pretty dorky in her own right (that's a compliment, Kimmy Poo) called me a whore and posted this entry:

She also didn't get the memo about my 45 pound weight loss. ;)

Vic is a freaking SUPERSTAR OF EPIC PROPORTIONS. This is her entry:

You can read the poem on her blog...Vic must be one of those overachiever people that you knew in high school that did all the gifted activities AND all of the Honor's Society shit that you (me) didn't even attempt to do because we (meaning me) assumed it was impossible.

Nancy was a former 'winner' of a contest where I sent random junk to random people. She's back to win Humphrey!

Max looks oddly cute as a bear. I am going to insist in the future that she is always wearing bear ears.


Awesome entries so far! Keep them coming. We're going to have the hardest time picking a winner, methinks. Jeremiah hasn't seen any of these so far...he's impossible to corner. And our computer is literally in the corner.

I Judge You, You Judge Me...CONTEST!!!

This contest is going to require everyone to get creative and devote some energy and intelligence. The winner (chosen by myself and Jeremiah) will win Humphrey, The Lonely Owl (Handmade and Stuffed by Me).

Here he is looking longingly into the camera, beseeching you to win him and welcome him into your home and arms:


To win Humphrey and the opportunity to be judged by me and Jeremiah you must complete one of the following tasks:

1)Write a short story about me and post it on your blog or email it to me.

2)Write a poem about me and post it on your blog or email it to me. You may also post a vlog of you reciting your ode to me.

3)Perform a song about me on a vlog and post it on your blog or email it to me.

4)Draw a picture (make it good!) of me or something I've written about on the blog. Post your picture and description of this picture or email me said picture and description.

Jeremiah and I will pick and announce the winner on Sunday February 14th!

If you have the opportunity to advertise this contest, please do so. I'm super nervous that one person (Aly from Calling People Names) is going to enter my contest.

Humphrey is a small owl pillow and made of hypoallergenic silk/acrylic mix yarn.

You can check out some of my new items in my shop at Ultra Cute Crochet!

Name Name What's In A Name?

Tony, who is a friendly and not at all rude Korean (he informs me that most are rude AND own sushi bars) asked me this question on my formspring.me page:

I like your kids' names. What are the stories behind them? Because if I ever have a kid, I want to name him/her something awesome like Jake and Gyllenhaal. Gyll for short.

'Loretta' Rose

Rose is my oldest daughter and Rose is actually her middle name. Yes, I'm one of those annoying parents who have to remind teachers, doctors and the like, 'Yes her first name is Loretta, but we prefer to use her middle name Rose and she usually only answers to that name.'
'Loretta' is after my mom because I love my momma. And not because I felt the urge to kiss her ass. Not at all, or in the least...nada, no reason to...nope.

Rose's are my favorite flower and is my favorite smell, red is my favorite color and I liked the Don Bluth cartoon A Troll in Central Park and I assumed that Rose would look just like the blonde and chubby Rosey in that movie because my last two siblings were blonde and chubby.

I was wrong. She had black hair and black eyes and was tiny and skinny.

Olivia Marie

I've told Olivia's name story in another post here.

Maxine Jane

After being overthrown by my ex in the incident we'll refer to as 'The Darling Episode', I decided I would name my third child anything I wanted to. It wasn't till after I had her and named her that I came up with the name Indiana Sue (Indy for short!!!!). But what's done is done and I really love the name Maxine Jane. I wanted something cute and almost unisex like 'Samantha', cause I love names that have cute nicknames. Jane is my favorite girls name. I used to name my dolls 'Jane' and characters in things I write and hide in computer folders named "Grocery Lists and Such" are always named 'Jane'.

Elijah Christopher

I wanted to leave Elijah's naming up to Jeremiah...since I had already named three children and he had not. We originally decided to name him 'Jeremiah Kincaid', but somewhere along the way we were decided against it. One day, in our 7th month of pregnancy, we were on our way to a state park to hike, i.e. walking along trails, and we stopped for coffee. That's when the name came to me. Elijah sounds like Jeremiah, but starts with a 'E' (like Erin, duh). Jeremiah loved it and we decided to name him 'Elijah Christopher(Jeremiah's middle name) Lyle' we dropped the Lyle right after his delivery (sorry Pappy...like he can read this in heaven. That wouldn't be very blissful, would it?) so his name wouldn't be too long.

And that's it. Other contenders for Rose's name were Estella and Elisabeth. If any of my daughters were boys I would have named them Henry, after my favorite writer (Ten Cents to the person who can name that writer!). We had a girls' name picked out for Elijah and obviously didn't end up needing it, Hollis Kathleen.

The Waiter Probably will not Visit My Formspring Account.

Jeremiah and I had the worst sushi EVER yesterday afternoon. And it's not like we went to some chinese buffet that has the gross weird sitting for days 'sushi' at the one end of the buffet (under the hot lights). This was an actual Japanese Restaurant with a promoted sushi bar. I'm so sad. It's actually turned me off of my favorite going out dinner (for a little while at least).

The weird thing is the waiter actually hated me. Which is strange, because everyone always loves me, this much is obvious.

When we walked in to the restaurant and were being seated the waiter was at the booth right beyond the one we were being led to. He had his arm around a customer and was talking to her about how cool it was that she was going to college, about how they were excellent customers and how they really made his day. His accent was fun, he was giggly and cool...so I was kind of looking forward to having him as our waiter.

After we were seated and my smiles at him were not returned in any fashion, I figured that whenever he was done with the other customers he would turn his adorable affections on us.
He coldly walked past us without a greeting or asking us for a drink order. He didn't come back for quite a awhile. When he did he was completely without the amusing grin, the cocked hip, the funny banter.

"What you want to drink?" Emotionless.

"Well, I'll have a water, and the baby will have water in a kids cup. Do you have something with a lid?"

I get a solemn and annoyed roll of the eyes for the question.

"Of course."

Jeremiah looks amused. My charms have failed, my smile did not work it's usual magic. I couldn't bumble my way into this guys heart...and I had no idea why.

Jeremiah orders a Coke (which is horrible for him and I wish he would never ever drink ever. If you're out there reading this and thinking that Coke isn't so bad, please reconsider. Cola is the downfall of our nation and Diet Cola is even worse. Take Care and protect yourself from this evil force.)

The waiter turns and rushes off before I can ask for hot tea.

I'm disappointed by the menu and although I usually don't like to order the usual and popular americanized rolls I settle on a lunch special with three rolls (one to share with Elijah). The waiter doesn't write it down, but I'm okay with that. What I'm not ok with is the way he hasn't once looked at us while we're sitting there RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM. What did I do that could have pissed off the guy so badly that his whole demeanor changed? Was it the smile? The awesome black turtle neck with 3/4 length sleeves? The light grey pants? The boots that are cloth and seem like that might be slippers but I wear them out in the snow regardless of their original and manufactured intent? The hair straightened but intentionally unstyled so as not to appear too soccer mommish?

Jeremiah orders some maki combo. We both get salads and soup. Which were both wonderful and practically thrown at us by our grouchy waiter.

Our rolls come out soon after, which was surprising. One of the usual experiences of eating sushi is waiting a little bit longer for the dude to craft your shit (I know the proper terms, I just don't want to seem like a total dweeb).

As I told you before they were gross. I'm not going to go into the details but I only ate a few pieces, which means that it had to be pretty dang bad. I have no idea how Jeremiah ended up eating all his and mine although he was as unhappy with the quality and taste as I was. I guess he was hungry.

We waited for a very long time for the bill. The mean waiter never refilled our drinks (which is probably better considered Jeremiah was drinking the 'evil pop'). He did bring us the bill eventually. Which wasn't cheap. He didn't say a word through this all. He did bring Jeremiah a refill right before we left though. It was diet Coke (the eviler of the two, which we discussed earlier, remember?).

We talked about our horrible experience for the rest of the day. Or actually...I complained about it for the rest of the day and Jeremiah nodded his head at me and pretended he was listening.

In other news, you can now ask me whatever your little heart desires over here at formspring.me. Mainly because I'm not original in any way shape or form and Steamy , Aly and Tony are doing it. I'll probably be putting a linky thing up over on the right side of my blog, somewhere. Although I hate clutter and I think that would really clutter this place up. Ugh, so many important decisions to make.

Fridays are Bittersweet...

Fridays are always bittersweet for me.

Three whole days of having my little boy (and the much bigger one) all to myself. But also three days without my girls. If you didn't already know, I share custody of my three oldest children with my ex husband.

I'm glad that they get to spend so much time with their dad. I loved every minute of my childhood all that much more because I had a kick ass dad. I wish I could have spent three whole days a week with him! He was a busy busy man when I was growing up. My mom definitely made up for it, but sometimes there's nothing like hanging with your Old Man.
(I remember listening to that Neil Young Album, Harvest...
Old man look at my life,
Twenty four
and there's so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.
and thinking 24! That's fucking OLD!)

Mom! Dad! You should have divorced and shared custody of JUST ME for a couple years. Duh.

Getting the girls ready to go is an ordeal. We have to do homework, eat and pack school clothes for Monday and going out clothes for the weekend (in case he takes them to friends' houses or the movies or MCDonalds...we don't eat fast food at our house, so one extra point for him). I have to make sure all of Rose's soccer clothes are packed, Max's playclothes are Max approved and go through the suitcase one or two extra times to see if Olivia has stowed anything dangerous or expensive away in the pockets.

I watch Elijah follow us around while we're all busy, getting ready for their departure. I feel for him, I had many siblings and although I couldn't freaking stand them, I couldn't imagine not having them around all the time. He pleads with Rose to play with him ('Pay Wo Wo, play!'), pleads with Max to color with him ('Bap! Bap! Bap!'), pleads with Olivia to let him ride her back('Me Widgy, ME!')...but they're long gone, heading out the door to Daddy Land. And he's stuck here with me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a good momma and a fun one too (most of the time), but even though I'll play with him and color with him and let him ride my back all weekend long, it doesn't compete with the joy his sisters bring him.

Alas.

I think of it as Elijah getting the best of both worlds. He is the youngest of four children four days a week, with three older sisters who love and adore him (unless he's hitting them with his 'Rawr', a dangerous lion head on a pole he insists on carrying around everywhere AND sleeping with), and then three days a week he's an only child to two loving and adoring parents. Jeremiah is the youngest of four boys and I'm the oldest of five siblings, so we both have a very concise understanding of how lucky Elijah is to have parents all to himself some of the week.

Maybe he'll appreciate it later in life when I help him with a weekend science project or a writing assignment. Maybe when his sisters are older they'll come to all his skating expos or football games...or art gallery openings? Maybe eventually he'll realize that he's lucky, having his Poppa all to himself, going to the pool with him, skating with him, hiking and fishing.

As for me, I don't think I'll ever get over not seeing my girls for three whole days every week. I miss making Max's snacks and cuddling with her while we read many many books. I miss sitting with all of my children at the table, listening to them complain about whatever I made for dinner. I miss seeing Jeremiah at the piano with Rose or Liv, frustratingly doing a lesson. I miss the feeling I get before I finally get into my bed, late at night...filled with the knowledge that all of my children are safe and sleeping, right at my fingertips.

I also know that I may never get over it, but that I let go a long time ago. If I lead with a brave and beaming face, eager for the future, the rest of my family will follow...regardless of whether they're with me four days a week or seven.

A PhotoJournalist's Worst Nightmare

I feel like I haven't posted photos in awhile...although I'm completely sure that the notion is inaccurate.


Olivia drew this for me, it's our family. From the left?
Jeremiah, Maxine, Olivia, Rosey, Momma, Elijah. Look at Elijah's freaky E.T. head! Ahhh!
(You will notice that I am thin in this family drawing. Olivia told me the other day, "Thank God you're not fat anymore, Momma.")


Jeremiah looks stormy and brooding while he's being artistic. He's so gorgeous.


Elijah is also gorgeous.



New blankey! In luxury merino wool...it is soooo soft. This blankey is baby size and on sale for $50 right now. Please contact me for more info at oliverosetree@yahoo.com or visit my shop online Ultra-Cute Crochet.


Trouble Times Two



Olivia Turned 7 this month



Rosey has black eyes. I don't mean the bruised kind...This hat is also for sale. It's sized Womens Regular, but as you see can be worn slouchy on a pre-teen or a teen.



Jeremiah was uncooperative while I was taking many many photos of us playing glow in the dark mini golf. So I posted the pic of him making a face at the camera in protest.