Now that is a great idea...

The past nine months (the number of months keeps getting higher faster than I want to believe it) have brought several brilliant business ideas to my mind. My two favorites...

1. High-end Chuck E Cheese - where they serve a one-glass limit of wine or martinis to moms, while their little angels play together and burn off energy. The beauty is that they will only let in clean, healthy, nice kids. There won't be any little Johnny to teach your kid swear words. And snot-nosed Suzy will be denied entrance. It will be quiet enough that moms can talk to each other and actually hear the other side of the conversation. The entire play-space will be visible from the location where moms sit. And no kid will ever get hurt, bored or scared. Everyone will come crabby and leave happy. Perfect, right?

This amazing idea evolved from the early days of Shawn's diagnosis when I really needed [errr, wanted?] a glass of wine and a chance for some girl-talk, but I wasn't able to leave Livie. Sadly, I never got the wine, girl talk or safe-place-to-play.


2. Glass throwing. It would be established as a 501c3 NFP - whose purpose is to assist with other's mental health of course. People could donate their unwanted glassware (tax deduction!) and those in need of a release could visit the glass throwing room, and break some glass. Throw it, stomp on it, whatever they wanted. Best part? The waste would be completely recyclable. This past week I have been furious for no good recent reason, and really wanted to break something. Throwing glass against the wall sounded heavenly. Unfortunately, I would have been stuck with the clean-up, so I nixed the idea. But to be able to go somewhere and break something on purpose? Perfect. (seriously)

(for the record, if anyone gets rich off these ideas, I want a share for being the brain child)

And that brings me to someone else's crazy idea. Making jewelry out of milk. Breast milk to be exact.

A friend told me about the creator when she read my post about having milk in the freezer that I didn't know what to do with. I found the thought insane at first. I was supposed to mail her Carter's milk?

But the more I thought about it, the more intrigued I was. I won't admit what I spent on them, but eventually I decided to order a couple of milk beads. Who knows if she actually makes them out of the milk that is sent to her, but I am going to humor my heart and believe that my milk beads really are made from Carter's milk. I don't plan on wearing my pendants - one is for my purse and one is for my drawer, but here they are:


They aren't exactly what I expected (or what I ordered for that matter) but I am not about to send more milk off, so they are what I have.  If nothing else, at least in some way, I will always be able to carry a part of Carter with me.

I chose the heart bead for obvious reasons.  I agonized over the choice for the second bead - a tear drop was a close second, but I chose the moon because moons and monkeys have come to remind us of Carter.  And it seems fitting.  The moon is a symbol of nighttime and sleep, and my little man was born sleeping.

Livie was watching me take pictures of the pendants, and started asking questions.  Prompted by something a new friend began for her son, our conversation quickly turned into a project of sorts.  The Carter Project.  Livie knows that I love taking pictures of her, but I can't take any more pictures of Carter, so instead, we are going to start taking pictures of things that remind us of him, as we come across them.  Monkeys, moons and his name.  Liv is an avid picture taker, so I am eager to see what all she comes up with.