Smart Mommy Solutions

Solution to a wet bathroom: shower splash guard

Tonya — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Well since this blog is called Smart Mommy Solutions, I thought that maybe I might post a solution that I just implemented. When my son leaves the bathroom after taking a shower, the bath mat is soaked, and the bathroom floor is really wet. He can’t seem to keep the water from getting past the shower curtain.

He should be able to (my daughter is successful), but it has just become frustrating, so I made my way to Lowes and found this shower splash guard.

It took 5 minutes to install, and should solve the problem nicely. Now I can stop being bothered by the wet floor, and can nag him about other things.

I could not find this exact version on Amazon, but there is one Bathtub Splash Guard that is close. I chose the tall one because I didn’t want to install the short ones and find that they didn’t work, so then have to go back and get the tall one. I figured the tall one would be most likely to solve the problem the first time.

Weekend Camping in the Desert

Tonya — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:07:08 +0000

We went for a great camping trip in the desert over the weekend. We went to the Anza Borrego State Park, and went for a hike up Palm Canyon to an oasis that is up the canyon. The oasis is really cool because you start the hike in dry desert where you can’t imagine there being any water for survival. You end the hike in an oasis with a flowing stream, a little water fall, and lots of shade provided by palm trees.

On our way up the canyon, we came across a group of 3 beautiful male Big Horn Sheep just hanging out and eating in the canyon. The were not bothered by us at all, and we were able to get close enough to get some really good pictures. I do have a telephoto lens on my camera, so I was not as close as it may look.

These animals are beautiful, and are considered endangered. In the 1990’s, there were only around 280 of these animals left in this area of the desert, and they were put on the endangered list. Their population has increased since then, but they are still endangered. This is their canyon, and I am so glad that they tolerate us visiting it.

The kids enjoyed climbing on the rocks up at the palm oasis.

It was a beautiful camping trip.

Ribbon Christmas Tree

Tonya — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:00:00 +0000

I made this little ribbon Christmas tree to have some of my students do in therapy, but It is so cute, I am going to use it in my house too. It is so easy to make, and it is so cute. It is a great activity for kids to do as a Christmas craft.

I started out by first collecting sticks in my backyard. If you have a lot of time, you could have the kids collect their own sticks, but my time is limited. I had 3 or 4 different types of wire edged ribbon for the kids to use, and I had them cut all the same lengths of the ribbon and we trimmed it at the end. I wanted them to be able to tie easily, so I didn’t want the ribbon to be too short to tie.

Then you just tie the ribbon in knots onto the stick. One group had some gold ribbon to go at the top as a star. You either have the kids fix the uneven ones if they can, or you go back and even things up so that there is equal amount of ribbon on both sides of the knot.

I then cut the ribbon in a tree shape. Some kids I had do this on their own, some kids I cut one side, and had them do the other side to match, and some kids I cut for them due to time constraints. Some turned out fluffy, and others were more Charlie brown tree like, but every single one was beautiful. I had some Styrofoam balls, and cut a flat side to them, then we just stuck our sticks in the Styrofoam to make them stand up.

I love this project so much, I am going to modify it to use at different times of the year. Expect to see this one again in different colors. Since the ribbon has wire edges, it makes it easy to practice the tying.

Materials:

Sticks/twigs
3-4 different wired edged ribbon
Styrofoam balls
Scissors

Protected: The information given tonight

Tonya — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 13:59:59 +0000

Protected: Welcome Photography Class

Tonya — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 12:49:31 +0000

Everyone has something to change

Tonya — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Everyone has something that they would like to change in their life. I have quite a few. The best way to make a change is to pick one thing that you want to change and then focus on that. It is very difficult to change too many things at one time. I have the usual things that I want to change, you know, lose weight, exercise, eat healthy, and others that I am not ready to detail, etc.

Since the best way is to pick one thing to change, I am going to narrow it down to a small piece. I will pick exercise, since it will have an impact on the other things that I want to change. I will then narrow that down even farther, and do 15 minutes of exercise each day. This is truly an easy change, so why haven’t I done it before? Well, I have, but then I always stop for whatever reason.

Here we will test it out. Will it have an impact?

No sense arguing when people won’t listen

Tonya — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:28:17 +0000

I had a frustrating appointment yesterday where the grandmother was not going to implement any of my therapy suggestions. She doesn’t speak English very well, but I can tell that if I had told her the suggestions in her primary language, she would not have implemented them either. She is going to do what she thinks is best, which I guess is her prerogative.

It is definitely not worth arguing about either. I tried that last week, and I only felt badly after I left that I had argued with her. I didn’t actually succeed in getting her to do what I want her to do for therapy. This week I just kept my mouth shut and listened to her old wives tales that have no basis in truth.

Dragonfly Macro

Tonya — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 23:38:51 +0000

I have been trying for a while to get a good dragonfly picture, but those little guys are fast. Most of the shots I get are blurry or they are too fast and are out of the shot before I get a chance to take the picture. I finally got a chance to get my shot.

This was taken at the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The dragonflies were shooting around all over the place. At first they weren’t landing, so I could only get blurry shots of them darting all over the place. Below is one of the action shots.

Kind of blurry, but cool that he is up in the air.

Here is a lovely flower shot too. Taken in a garden in Salt Lake City.

Sweet baby hummingbird

Tonya — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 17:38:36 +0000

My birthday is next week, and I found an awesome deal on a zoom lens for my camera. I found it at Target for only $99. It is a Canon EF 75-300mm zoom lens. Today I had my first chance to see how well it works. We were outside, and my daughter pointed out a hummingbird on the tree. I ran in to change lenses, and came back out to snap some pictures. I noticed that there were two hummingbirds at first, but that when I came back outside with my longer lens, there was only one. I waited patiently, and even sat down for a bit to wait and see if the mommy came back.

It was well worth the wait. Here is the baby waiting for mommy to come back.

Baby is still waiting.

Here comes mommy.

I am so jazzed about my new lens. I did have to manually focus because there were so many branches that the camera couldn’t figure out what I wanted it to focus on. I just manually focused and then stayed in the same spot to take all of the pictures. The baby stayed in the same place the whole time.

I have high hopes for things that I will be able to capture now.

Chocolate Filled Strawberries and Cherries

Tonya — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:00:00 +0000

I stocked up on fruit yesterday and have a lot of strawberries and cherries. As I was having my daughter wash and cut some strawberries for lunch, she and a friend were saying how great it would be to fill them with chocolate since they were hollow. I jumped on that idea, and found some cream cheese in the fridge, mixed it with some melted chocolate chips and some powdered chocolate milk mix.

We put the chocolate cream mixture into a pastry bag and filled the strawberries.

While we were at it, we decided to pit some of the cherries and fill them with chocolate too.

They were soooo yummy.

Really delicious, and so easy to do spur of the moment. You can bet that I will be doing it again, and the nesquick mix was great to add the chocolate flavor.