I found Rocky Mountain Decals on Instagram and fell in love with their removable wallpapers. I wanted Olive’s room to feel “light and airy, and a place she could come and be herself.” Just kidding. I had no clue what I was going for, nor what I wanted it to look like. So up until I found these wallpapers, her room didn’t feel like much of anything. Putting up the wall paper just made everything look so put together. I’m in love with it. It’s my favourite room in the house, other than the pantry where I hide my secret candy stash.
They have so many options for different looks. The best part is that its removable and doesn’t damage your wall, and it’s extremely forgiving. Dane had to peel it off a few times when he was applying it if it wasn’t lined up perfectly (sometimes it pays to have a perfectionist as a husband!)
They have so many options to choose from, and its most definitely not limited to kids rooms! I wanna do our ensuite bathroom in the black and white floral. Just have to convince Dane:) Please, please go check them out! They’re Canadian and super helpful to work with. Ok, enough talking.
Rocky Mountain Decals are offering you guys an exclusive 15% off your own wallpaper with the code OLIVEBELL. So go browse and start baking the cake now to convince your husbands that you need this!
Thank you so much Rocky Mountain Decals for partnering with Olivebell to bring Olive the cutest little room where she can destroy all of the instagram worthy things. Like the books that are more decor than anything. And the white jelly cat bunny she threw in the toilet.
When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write books. I wanted to write poems about golden retrievers and first loves. I would find rhyming words and write poems that I hope none of you ever read. I never pursued it. Instead I started a blog with horrible grammar and incorrect spelling, all rolled up with a little sarcasm and whole lot of honesty.
The story I’m about to share with you is only partially mine. It’s mostly my parents story, as well as my grandparents story. If we had a nickel for every time someone told one of us that my parents story should be made into a book, we’d have quite a few nickels. This is my way of telling my parents story.
I was thinking I could make into a series. Because let’s be honest, I’m gonna be all over the map, with no structure.
I could do one post about an experience we had, or a post about a really significant thing that happened to my parents. Tell me your thoughts. Yes? No?
There’s just so much to share, and so many things that come up along the way it’s impossible for me to keep track, or to do this in order.
But here’s a start.
I’m Canadian. I was born in Canada. I get asked where I’m from almost daily. I think people wonder why I’m tanned and don’t have an accent. My family (more so my parents) get a lot of ignorant comments. I think a few of us live in this beautiful bubble where we believe that racism is a thing of the past. I’m here to tell you that it’s fine that you live there. I think it might even be a great place to live. But I’m also here to tell you that racism is still here. And I truly believe that it will never go away.
And I’m not talking about the “go back to your country on your banana boat” comments. Even though a man told my dad that three years ago while on a road trip in the States when he asked this man for directions. I’m not even talking about the guy who told my mom “you immigrants come to OUR country and steal our jobs” while at work while she was trying to help him settle his case. Hey buddy? If you want her job, go for it! It’s there. My mother just happened to work her butt off for 8 years in UNIVERSITY getting herself a pretty little paper that says MASTERS DEGREE. You go and do that and you can have her job. I’m not talking about the guy that yelled at my brother “get off the road you dirty Mexican!” while walking home from high school. Or the people who called him a wetback. I’m not even talking about the guy in a truck that yelled at Dane and me to “stick to our own kind” when we were walking home from getting ice cream. Um, sir? If what you mean by “own kind” is that he gets triple decker ice cream cones and I get a small, and he still somehow doesn’t gain an ounce, I 100% could not agree more. But I don’t think that’s what you were talking about. These comments don’t really effect me a whole lot.
You know what effects me? Hearing my parents stories of when they first came. The story of my dad who was working in a house and he found a jar full of quarters. He had literally no money. No money for food. So he stole a handful of quarters. He remembers a few hours later, he saw a police car drive up. He was so terrified he went and hid in a closet and cried. In the end, the owner of the house was a police man coming to see how things were going. But in those moments, my dads world was ending.
There are stories of my dad getting kicked by men in positions of power. There are stories where my dad was exploited by men in positions of leadership, where these men thought they could treat him as if he were just the gum off their shoe. Those stories hurt.
Those are the stories that I wish I could find those men and tell them “you thought you could break Americo Exavi Campos. You thought you could win. I’m here to tell you you were wrong. And that the 20 year old boy you thought you were keeping down, well, he won. He won at this life. And you? You lost.” There are moments, when I want to do just that.
I could tell you stories about my 18 year old mother. I could tell you how her manager at a factory cutting fabric put a banana in her face and said things to her that should never leave the lips of man. My mother didn’t use some hashtag to prove that “time’s up.” She couldn’t wear an all black dress to an award ceremony to take her stand. My mother went home and told her 20 year old husband, “I’m not going back that place. I’m going back to school.” And her 20 year old husband said “Ok.”
I could tell you that when she become pregnant with me, she finished her high school diploma here in Canada, with her feet so swollen from severe edema that she went and wrote all of her diplomas barefoot. She literally went to high school with no shoes, in a country she barely knew, with a language she didn’t know, because that’s the kind of fire my mother had in her.
I could tell you how in the first stages of her pregnancy, her doctor referred her to a different clinic, to which her and my dad went to. Why? Because they were the doctors, they knew better. And my parents didn’t speak English.
Turns out it was an abortion clinic. Her doctor was too ignorant to think it possible that they might have planned me or wanted me. Shame on you Sir, but, I’m here and I made it despite you doubting my parents.
There are nights when my husband is laying next to me sleeping, and my mind won’t shut off, and it wanders to my parents. Or my childhood. My husband does not even know this about me, but on those nights, I cry quietly to myself. I let the tears fall. I don’t hold them back, mostly because I spent most of my early life trying not to cry. I didn’t want people to see that I felt inferior to them. Or that I was insecure about who I was. Or that I didn’t want people to think my parents were lesser people because of their skin colour, or where they were from. I cry because when I hear stories and I see my dad choking back the tears, I wish I could be 30 year Claudia and hug 20 year old Exavi. I wish I could be me, the woman that I am today, and tell him “Dad, keep going. Keep fighting. You make it. In the end, you make it. And your life is beautiful.”
I wish I could be 30 year old Claudia and hug 18 year old Noemi. I wish I could look her in the eyes and say “Momma, you do it. In the end, you get your degree. In the end, you travel the world with your two babies and your husband. You fight and you win some of the hardest battles life has to offer, but because you’re so strong, in the end… you come out victorious.” Those are the thoughts that race through my mind on the nights that the tears flow freely and my husband lays next to me.
I wish I could go back in time and say those things to my young parents. Because I will never understand or know all the hardships they went through, and I can only imagine what kind of lonely nights they must have endured. Or how bleak their futures must have looked to them. I mostly just wish I could hold them in those moments, and tell them how proud I would become of them, 30 years later. Because I am. I really, really am. Those are the thoughts that race through my head at 2:00 in the morning, while my husband sleeps. Or pretends to sleep, because who wants to deal with a crying wife at 2:00 in the morning without ice cream in the fridge?
My parents are immigrants from El Salvador, considered to be one of “s**t hole” countries Mr. President so eloquently put it. They moved to Canada in 1984, due to the civil war in El Salvador. My parents have seen dead bodies on the streets with blankets covering them. They have heard gunshots over and over again, daily. They know what it means to have a 6:00 pm curfew or be shot. They have seen their peers hanging from trees, outside of their school. They’ve heard the marching of soldiers outside their homes. Their mothers telling them to back away from the window in case a confrontation between the guerrilla and military broke out. They know war. They know what war sounds like. They know what war smells like. They know what war looks like.
My grandfather was kidnapped by the military. The day it happened was a normal day. My dad was in the auto parts shop that they owned, which was attached to their home. He and my grandpa were there. My dad says a black van pulled up, men were all dressed in black. They wore masks. They held a machine gun to my dad’s head and told him not to move, scream, or say a word. My dad was 17 and he had to watch as his dad was put into the back of a van and taken away, all the while he had a gun to his head. My dad remembers he could see his mom in the courtyard, and he so badly wanted to scream for her. But he couldn’t. Looking back now he says it was probably for the best. If he had screamed they might have all ended up dead. The second the van took off, he went and ran to his mom to tell her King (That was my grandpa’s nickname and what my dad and uncle called him), her husband, her children’s father, had been taken by men in a van.
What happened next, quite literally shapes the rest of ALL of our lives. My dad’s, my mom’s, my brothers and mine. The life of my grandmother’s on both my parents sides. I would even go as far as to say the life of Olive. If it had not been for this monumental moment, I would not be here. My family would not be here. My parents could quite possibly be dead. This is the story of a strong boy named Americo Exavi Campos, and a beautiful girl named Rosalba Noemi Lopez. These are my parents, this is their story.
Chocolate chip. Oatmeal raisin cookie. Oatmeal chocolate cookie. Peanut butter cookie. Sour cream chocolate cookie. Cracker Jack cookie. Shortbread cookie. Sugar cookies. Monster cookies. Christmas cookies. Thumbprint cookies. White chocolate cranberry cookies. Macarons. Macaroons. S’mores cookies. I could go on (not really, my mind is drawing a blank. But I feel like I’ve made a lot more than just that).
But then I made these cookies. I am not lying to you when I tell you that in the month of February, I have made these 6 times. No lie, no exaggeration. SIX times. And two of those times I doubled the recipe. That’s 8 dozen cookies that I have mostly consumed myself. I shared some, but for the majority I ate most. So do yourself a favour and make these. They’re rich, they’re gooey, they’re gluten free, they’re easy, they’re no bake. I found the recipe on pinterest from the Sugar Apron Blog.
Do you guys remember when Tom Cruise was on the Oprah show when he was married to Katie Holmes? And he jumped on the couch because he was so in love and made a complete fool of himself? I remember Oprah asked him “what’s one thing that drives you crazy about Katie?” He got this stupid grin on his face and he answered “her smile and how she bites her lip.” The whole audience of middle aged women all in unison went “awwwwww!!!” I was so annoyed. I wanted to hear the real dirt. Like…. “her farts are rank.” Or “she cuts her toenails in bed.” Or “she has stinky feet.” No. He had to be all romantic and say her smile drives him crazy in a good way. Like EW.
So I decided to go against all Valentine’s Day tradition and tell you for REAL what drives me crazy about Dane. And no, it’s not his smile or his eyes. These are things that he does almost daily and I kinda wanna smack him.
1). He closes the heat vent in our bedroom. This. Drives. Me. Crazy. He has to have the room at glacial temperature to be able to sleep, so therefore I have to freeze every night. When I get up to pee in the middle of the night, its like a different climate zone. Tropical heat (normal people temperature, but for me it’s tropical), and north pole temperature in our room. I sometimes get up to pee just so I can thaw out.
2). He throws my stuff out without asking. So here’s a fun fact about Dane. He HATES clutter. But it sucks for me, because if he sees something that isn’t being used, or to him looks like something he can’t use, he throws it out. Like my makeup bag. With the TAGS still attached. I could have killed. I’ll be looking for something, ask him where it is and he gets this nervous look and says “uhhhh I might have thrown that out.” And then I yell at him and he answers with the same answer every time. “I didn’t think you needed it!” What a guy.
3). The shower head. He’s tall, so he moves the shower head to the very back. So when I turn on the shower to let the water warm up, it’s hitting the back wall, in turn spraying water all of the floor and my hair. Which I did not want to wash that day.
4). He rinses the dishes and leaves them on the counter. Oh. MAN. This actually really annoys me. He will take the time to rinse the dishes and clean them off, but he can’t take that extra 3 seconds to put them in the dishwasher. Which is literally under the counter he’s leaving them on. So he wouldn’t even have to move a step. So I’m left with a ton of half cleaned dishes on the counter, as well as a huge lake of water to clean up. Just leave them in the sink so my counter isn’t covered in dishes and gross food water, or put them IN THE DISHWASHER. Dane- if you’re reading this…. c’mon. Get with it.
5). Makes fun of my eyebrows. For as long as i can remember Dane has been beaking ma brows. He says that I fill one in way darker than the other. I don’t see it, I’ve tried. The other day he looks at me and says “Claud. Your brows are brutal. One looks like you filled in with a sharpie, the other one looks like you filled in with a crayon.” Ouch. Too far, too far. My brow are on flick.Or fleet. Or flick, whatever you’re supposed to say about brows.
6). Eats my cookie dough. That’s it. I’ll be making cookies and he grabs not small, but big globs of cookie dough. And I hate it.
7). Coke. He hates that I drink Coke, I hate that he tells me I shouldn’t drink coke.
8). His french press. He is a coffee snob. I want a keurig cuz you can get fancy white ones, and then I can offer all my guests (no one) coffee in my cute over priced anthro mugs. But noooooooo, he has coffee in a french press. Which he leaves coffee grinds in, and again…. on the counter. So I’m always washing out coffee grinds and they get everywhere. I hate coffee. I want a white keurig.
9). Tightens bottles. Olive wakes up throughout the night. STILL. Ya, I know, feel sorry for me. SO at 3:00 in the morning when she’s whining “bottle” and I’m a zombie and walking to the kitchen to fill up her bottle, and I can’t open it because Dane thinks they need to be tightened so not even Chuck Norris can open it, it gets a little annoying.
10). Laundry. I know what you’re thinking. “Why are you complaining about your husband doing laundry?” Here’s why. He feels the need to do it constantly. ( I can just hear his smug voice.. “If I don’t do it, it will never get done.”) I’m the type of person who will put laundry through the dryer once more just to avoid folding it (asking for a friend). So he washes my laundry, great. But then dumps it on the bed so I’m forced to fold it. When I don’t want to fold LAUNDRY.
I keep secrets from Dane. You can’t really judge…. because I can almost guarantee you one of mine is also one of yours. Or similar. Here are mine.
1). When I was 9 months pregnant we went out to State and Main for supper. As soon as we finished eating (it was late because it was dark out, thank GOODNESS), I felt sick to my stomach. I had beads of sweat on my forehead, I felt all clammy, lightheaded, and just needed to get out of there. We were crossing the parking lot to the truck when I just knew I was about to puke. And I did. Man did I ever. I went to the back of the truck and puked my brains out into a shrub. Like full on chunky barf. So I’m 9 months pregnant, and spewing my insides out and I may or may not have been bearing down fairly significantly. And there may or may not have been a few noises that came out the other end. So I finish almost dying and get in the truck where Dane is patiently waiting for his 9 month preggo wife finish barfing. He looks over at me and goes “Um… were you like farting really loud?” I already felt embarrassed enough. Like a baby whale barfing isn’t enough of a sight to see already. So I did what any normal wife would do. I lied. I said no. So the best part is that he actually says “What? I thought you were cuz I could hear super loud fart noises. Hmmm. Must have been my truck.” Um.. my husband has just compared my farts to a truck. Awesome. Thanks sweets. Nope, just your run of the mill 9 month preggo wife puking her brains out all while farting.
2). I get jealous of how he knows what Olive is saying. She’s constantly chattering away in the back seat while we’re driving and she’ll go “sjdhcjabdsjkkhs?!” And Dane just instantly says “Oh, no Olive. We didn’t bring your protein bar and green juice.” Or she’ll scream “jdywncsdkjhcdcsljduto!!!!!!” And he’ll laugh and say ” Oh Olive! That was such a good knock knock joke!” And they’ll giggle together. OK, OBVIOUSLY I’m lying about what they’re saying, but he magically just knows what her gibberish is. It’s like he knows the Olivean dialect. And I feel left out. And I feel slightly jealous.
3). On a few occasions, I have been known to hide a McDonald’s bag inside a grocery bag and throw it in the garbage. And then I may have piled more garbage on top of it.
4). Ladies- I KNOW I am not alone on this one. Dane – (looking at my outfit quizzically) “is that shirt new?” Me – (pretending to look surprised) “What? This old thing? No. I got it ages ago. I can’t believe you’ve never noticed me wearing it before. You clearly need to pay attention to me more.” The shirt was new people.
5). Dane- “What did Olive eat today?” Me – “for breakfast she had a kale and spinach smoothie. Lunch she has organic lentil soup with quinoa and a salad. Her afternoon snack was celery sticks with rutabaga. And she JUST finished eating supper before you got home. She had beets with peas, and a few roasted chickpeas. For dessert she had 4 organic raisins and a blueberry.” She had a cookie. And a fruit leather. Sue me.
Sometimes I know Dane knows I’m lying. But he can’t call me out because he has his little secrets he’s kept from me. How do I know? Because his phone dings off the kijiji sound 3-5 times a week. So I know he’s buying some stupid part for his quad or some tool he just HAS to have. Last year, he went to some auction. Called me from there to inform me that he has spent our retirement plan savings on counter top and random tools. One of which is still sitting in the garage, untouched. (Anyone want to buy a sander?) Why? Because it was such a “good deal.” So the next time I find a dress at anthro, this will be my strategy. “is that a new dress?” “You bet your countertops it is! It was such a good deal I just had to buy it.” Ah, the joys of marriage. What are your secrets? Any of the above sound familiar?
