Happy Valentine's Day!

Every princess deserves to feel special on Valentine's Day. If the princess in question is a child, then Mommy or Daddy should do something special for her to mark the ocassion and let her know how loved she is to them. If the princess is grown, then a friend or a sister should do something special for her to show her she is loved.

One year on Valentine's Day, I had a lot of single friends and my fiance was 7,000 miles away, so I threw a Valentine's Day party. My single friends all came. There was party food and games to play, romantic movies to watch and I even bought cute little stuffed frogs for them all that, when squeezed, would either croak like a frog or say "Give me a kiss" in a rough voice.

I always do something special for my children on Valentine's Day too, from buying them Valentine's Day cards, special sweets or cute little toys to sometimes just making cupcakes for their whole classrooms.

You don't have to limit Valentine's Day to just a romantic day; it can be a day for friends and family too.

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day, full of the love of family and friends.




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A Princess Drawing Done By A Five Year Old

Five year old Isabella loves the idea of being a princess. She loves princess stories, princess dresses and princess art. Today, using a book called How to Draw Princesses and Ballerinas (Usborne Activities), she drew this princess.

For the book in the US:


For the book in the UK:




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Feminine & Strong

My little girl loves everything to do with princesses. If it's sparkly and pink, then she acquires it and adores it. She loves wearing dresses and she loves looking girly. She is five years old.

For my other daughters, five was about the age when they started to lose their love of all things girly, or at least, they pretended to lose their love of dresses and tiaras and other girly things.

I wonder if my little five year old will start to think that she has to show the world a different face. Why is it that the world around her seems to encourage her to be tough rather than tender, stoic rather than emotional, and suspicious rather than trusting?

She is hanging on to her idealism about being a princess. I hope she continues to do so. There is nothing wrong with being tough and strong, but there is also a great deal of strength to be found in things that are traditionally considered feminine. Being able to shed tears and show emotion has the power to help us heal emotionally and the strength to face almost anything. Being able to show compassion and tenderness is one of the ways of making this world a better place for others.

When did the world start equating femininity with weakness? When did the world at large decide that to be anything other than macho and masculine was to be weak and victimized? It's a falsehood that should never have been given legitimacy in society.

Some of the most feminine women I know have backbones of steel.

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Throwing A Princess Birthday Party

One of our daughter's just turned five, and she requested a princess party.

We bought some of the usual sweets and treats for the party bags, but I wanted something especially princess-themed to give to the party-goers. I bought some wooden frames and painted some of them bright pink, some of the dark blue and some of them yellow. I also bought stencils made to fit the frames. The stencil I bought said "Princess" across the top and had stars and crowns on it.

For the yellow frames I tried a peach colored paint for the stenciling on one and a metalic blue for the stenciling on the other one. The blue looked better than the peach color, in my opinion.




For the pink frames, I chose a metallic purple for the stenciling. I liked the way they turned out.



For the blue frames, I didn't stencil the whole word, "Princess." I stopped when it only spelled "Prince," and I used a metallic aqua color for the stenciling. I really liked the way that they turned out.



We took photos of each child as they arrived at the party. (They were wearing costumes.) We then added the photos to the frames as gifts for them to take home with them. We also took some photos of our daughter with her friends as an extra photo for each of them to take home with them to remember the party.




The kids played the usual games such as Pass-the-Parcel and Musical statues.





I also wanted some princess-themed crafts for the kids to do. First, they made "royal chalices." I bought some inexpensive plastic wine glasses and a variety of stickers. Because my daughter had invited both boys and girls to her party, I bought some stickers of cars, trucks and emergency vehicles as well as stickers of flowers, butterflies, Disney princesses, hearts and stars. (I would have bought stickers of dragons and knights, but I couldn't find any.) The kids then got to decorate their "royal chalices" with the stickers.






Next, we had some crowns I had bought at the craft store for the kids to decorate with stickers too.





Then we progressed to the food. I wanted to keep it simple, so I had some sausage rolls and pizza that I stuck in the oven and baked beforehand to serve to the kids, and they all seemed to like them.

Last, we moved on to serving the cake and singing "Happy Birthday."



Robert made a simple two-layer round cake and frosted it. He rolled out ready-to-roll icing and wrapped it around some cake rolls which he then cut in two pieces each for the towers. One of the pieces was 2/3 of the cake rolls and the other was 1/3 of the rolls. We used more vanilla frosting to attach the larger halves of the towers to four sides of the round cake and we put three of the smaller ones on top of the cake. He frosted the tops of the towers and added mini marshmallows around the edges of them. He used food coloring to color the left-over ready-to-roll icing, and then rolled it out and cut out windows and doors, using thinly spread frosting to stick them to the "castle."




The cake was a big hit!

Wonderful Women

"What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves." ~Paul Valery

The way we are treated or talked about, the way people see us, has an effect on us even when we don't want it to. Don't you think the world would be a completely different place if women were all confident and felt good about themselves?

I propose we all do something this month to help make that a reality. This month, at least one time every day, tell a woman or a girl in your life a compliment. Make sure it is sincere and that it is empowering. Compliment her looks or compliment her sense of humor. Compliment her skill or compliment her intelligence. Compliment her talent or compliment her kindness. There is always something wonderful to be found in every girl or woman.

Your compliments don't have to all be face to face. You can compliment someone you admire on-line too, or let your mom or sister know how great she is while on the phone with her. The point is that you somehow tell someone how great you think they are.

You can start today by telling me in the comments about a woman or girl that you think is terrific and why you think so.

I must admit, I have so many wonderful girls and women in my life that I could do this every day for the whole year!

Prince Charming?

Being a grown woman with a failed marriage behind me and in a healthy marriage now, with children of my own, I am at a point in my life where I know exactly what traits Prince Charming should have in order to be MY Prince Charming. I'm happy to admit that my husband fulfills my Prince Charming requirements.

But what about my daughters? What have they learned from me about Prince Charming and what they should look for in him? And what have they learned about him from their peers and the media? Have I raised my teenage girls to be the confident and capable women that I hope they will be? Am I raising my younger daughters in a way that will teach them what to look for?

And just as importantly, what have my sons learned from me about what it takes to BE someone's Prince Charming? Will my lessons to them stick despite other outside negative influences?

Here's what I hope they have learned from me, and I hope they have learned it well enough to ignore some of the conflicting lessons that their peers and the modern media might try and teach them.

1 - Prince Charming always treats his princess with respect.
2 - Prince Charming NEVER calls names or physically hurts his princess.
3 - Prince Charming is kind-hearted and empathetic towards others.
4 - Prince Charming values education and intellect in both himself and his princess.
5 - Prince Charming always sees his princess as beautiful, no matter what her weight is or whether or not she is having a bad hair day.
6 - Prince Charming is not afraid to show his emotions.
7 - Prince Charming is willing to do some of the cooking and cleaning in the house and does not expect his princess to do it all on her own, whether she works outside of the home or not.
8 - Prince Charming can be patient with his princess when needed.
9 - Prince Charming is good with children.
10 - Prince Charming is not afraid of a little hard work.
11 - Prince Charming knows how to behave romantically.
12 - Prince Charming understnads that "no" always means "no," and he will never pressure his princess into doing something she doesn't want to do.
13 - Prince Charming is faithful to his princess.
14 - Prince Charming does not ogle or otherwise lust after any women other than his princess.
15 - Prince Charming understands and is proud of the fact that his princess is strong and capable and can do anything she sets her mind to do.
16 - Prince Charming never belittles his princess's dreams and instead will do whatever he can to encourage and aid her in achieving her dreams.
17 - Prince Charming does not raise his voice or shout when he is angry but instead discusses differences calmly and without accusation.

I could add to the list, but basically, it all boils down to #1 - RESPECT. I want my sons to learn to respect the women in their lives and I want my daughters to feel respected and to know that they deserve to be respected.

Sometimes, with all of the outside influences and pressures that I know they face as they grow up, I know it can be an uphill battle, but if everyone teaches their children about respect, then maybe those outside influences will instead be influenced by the rest of us.

What do you hope your children, your little princesses and future Prince Charmings learn from you about how to treat one another?

"You've Lost Your Muchness"

"You used to be much more..."muchier." You've lost your muchness." ~The Mad Hatter (to Alice), "Alice In Wonderland" movie, 2010

This quote struck a note with me as I watched the new "Alice In Wonderland" movie last weekend. I think back to my own childhood, and I can't help but remember how confident and adventurous I was as a child. I don't know where along the way I lost those parts of myself, but somewhere along this journey of life, some of that confidence and my sense of adventure seeped away.

And as a mother of daughters, I feel a responsibilty to analyze where my "muchness" went and what caused me to lose so much of it. I can't help but want my daughters to keep all of their confidence, all of their sense of adventure, all of their belief in themselves, and not to let anyone or anything in this world take any of it away from them.

I grew up eager to please. I wanted to be liked. My parents taught me to be nice to others. I was expected to behave and be a good girl. I was taught, probably unintentionally, to subjugate my desires and my needs in order to fit in and to please others. I was a talkative, bubbly, confident child who believed in herself and had no doubts that I could change the world. But I was taught from the world around me, from my elders and my peers, that I talked too much, that I had many flaws and that no one person could change the world.

It took me many years to mature enough to finally start gaining back what I lost of myself over the years. I do not want that to happen to my daughters, and I don't want it to happen to anyone else's daughters either. We do our daughters a disservice when we expect them to conform to society, to be nice, to be "good girls" at the cost of being themselves.

My favorite quote from the movie "A Little Princess" is when the character Sarah Crew says,

"I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren't pretty, or smart or young. They're still princesses. All of us."

I like this quote because I want every girl in the world to believe it. If a girl can believe she is a princess, then she can believe that she has value.

I want girls to maintain the same confidence and belief in themselves and their abilities throughout their lives that they have when they are two years old. How many two year olds do you know that don't say what they think? Tell a two year old that she is pretty, and she will, more often than not, answer you with, "I know," rather than the conformist "Thank you," or worse, the confidence-sapping "No, I'm not!" that I hear so often when I compliment any female.

Why do we lose our "muchness?" Why is it that we feel we must be something other than who we really are in order to be liked and loved and accepted? And what will it take for us (and our mothers, aunts, nieces, sisters and daughters) to truly BELIEVE in our own awesomeness?

So I have a challenge for you. This week, do something that you have been putting off out of fear. Speak to someone new, even if you are feeling shy. Try out some rock climbing, even if you don't believe you are strong enough. Send out the manuscript you wrote to a publisher, even if you are afraid of rejection. There are millions of things you can do to fulfill this challenge, from small, seemingly insignifcant things (like making a point to smile at the cute mailman who delivers your mail) to much bigger things (like singing on stage on front of a crowd). It's up to you to decide what to do. But do something brave.

And it'd be really great if you came back here and let us know in the comments what it was.