Today we learned a bit about the ancient history of Korea and Japan. Then we wrote haikus. I told the kids the 5-7-5 rule and told them to write about anything they like. This is what Luke gave me:

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah

Sigh. Back at the drawing board, he remembered his spelling from earlier today, and came up with this:

characteristic
characteristic, big word
what a funny word

Peyton took the more traditional route:

Let's go to the yard
and pick flowers while the bees
buzz and we laugh long

Guess who is the artsy student, and who is the class clown.

Hey, how about we all write a haiku? It's easy - three lines, 5 syllables in the first, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third. You can write about anything you want! Share it in the commments!

Labels: Homeschooling, My Troubled Children

While this may be somewhat off-color (pun intended, of course), you are guaranteed to laugh your hiney off when you read it.

Stuff White People Like

Click, read, then come back and tell me what your favorite item on the list is. Oh, but you may not get off that easy. If you are indeed white, you must also tell me if you like your item, too. If you are not white, well, just share your favorite item and laugh knowingly at us.

Enjoy!

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And I want to say a special thanks to Nancy at La Dolce Vita for introducing me to the great charity that is featured today on Give It Away. I hope you'll check it and let others know about it.

Labels: Give It Away, Linkorama

First of all, I have a point and shoot camera. Second of all, we only have one north facing window in our whole house, and it is in a corner in Peyton's room. Third of all, I don't have Photoshop.

I took Randi's recommendation and used Picnik to edit these.

I followed Donna's first tutorial trying to match up the features of Picnik with what she described on Photoshop. Here's what I got:

This first shot was the SOOC shot. SOOC is fancy photographer language for Straight Out of the Camera. I learned that on Donna's tutorial, too.





This second shot is the edited version.

What do you think?

Warning: If you haven't messed with this sort of thing, it's addicting!

Labels: Photography; The GRP

I am without material today, and Donna has such big news that I think she forgot to post the feast. So, I'm just doing it myself. I hope she doesn't mind. Donna is now hobnobbing in the upper levels of the blogosphere. I hope she'll remember the little people.

I just edited to add the forgotten link to Donna's About Me page on the Pioneer Woman website. Because it's really a big deal and you should go see it and tell Donna congratulations! Plus, look at the beautiful pictures she has upon her About Me page!

From Friday's Feast:

Appetizer

What does the color dark green make you think of?

Soup

How many cousins do you have?

Salad

On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how honest are you?

Main Course

Name something that is truly free.

Dessert

Using the letters in the word SPRING, write a sentence.

I'm posting mine in the comments, come join in!

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Congratulations to Nancy at La Dolce Vita", whose entry was chosen by my random number generator, Peyton. I will be featuring her chosen charity both here and at Give It Away on Monday. So don't forget to check in to here about it - it's a good one!

In the mean time - have you been to Give It Away? I hope you'll check it, leave a comment, link it on your blog. Please help spread the word!

Labels: Give It Away, Just for Fun

Last week, Shannon, who hosts Works for Me Wednesday, shared how she keeps all the family's socks downstairs to speed departure time. Well, mine goes hand-in-hand with her idea. We have a shoe closet:



This is the coat closet in the entry hall, and I threw the shoe holder over the door for the kids keep their shoes in. BUT, there were still shoes everywhere. It was far too difficult to climb the stairs and put their shoes away - they needed to save that energy to ask me for a snack 28 times a day. So I brought out the big guns and told them that every time I found their shoes strewn across the floor, they owed me a dollar. They got three chances before the fine kicked in. You know what? They've never had to pay me a dollar. Funny how a little financial incentive can produce such fine results! Now if I could just get them to close that door.

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Wednesday's work in progress

Peyton is making a quilt for Romy. She chose the fabrics and I guided her to the strings pattern. I figured if her seam allowances aren't uniform it won't matter so much. Well, it's her first go at a sewing machine and her seams are straighter than mine.





Now for the STUPID confession. I'm cutting this quilt for Peyton because the rotary cutter proved to be a bit too difficult yet. So, This is what I did:



Rather than having Peyton make big sheets with the strips and then cutting out the diamonds from them, I had her make individual squares then I'm cutting one diamond from each. A HUGE waste of time and fabric. You should have seen my face the instant that I realized that error. But like I tell Peyton, every mistake is an opportunity to learn something. In fact, I'm constantly learning things!

Labels: Crafts, Quilting, Works for me Wednesday, Works in Progress

Spring has sprung and we've had some interesting friends drop by.

First, Agmontonia. She is the cardinal who has returned for her fourth spring outside our dining room window. She is convinced that she would like to live inside our dining room and works very hard at trying to make that happen. Or maybe she's just trying to get rid of that other female in the dining room who is trying to steal her man. Either way, she spends hours of her days tapping at our window.

At first she seems sane:



But really, she's the mayor of Crazytown (name the reference for bonus points):



Agmontonio, her love interest, just hangs back in the wax myrtle and watches her. If you look at him closely, you can see him shaking his head. It's almost imperceptible, but he is shaking his head. Occasionally, he picks some seed from our feeder and brings it to her. They remind me a lot of Bud and me - me frantically beating my head against all the dining room windows of this world, and Bud hanging back, shaking his head just a little and making sure I don't starve. It's sweet really, in a sad, twisted sort of way.

Then there are these guys. Ugh and Shudder. Those are their names. They look like rats who survived an accident at a nuclear power facility. Why they were out in the middle of the day on my back fence we'll never know. Ugh. Shudder.




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The GRP

Labels: Just for Fun, The GRP

Hey! It's Bud's birthday (and yesterday was my birthday, along with someone very special).

Happy Birthday, Bud! I love you! And a question to ponder - why do men look more handsome and distinguished as they age and women just look, well, older? Talk amongst yourselves.

So here is the Very Exciting Project I have been working on. On which I have been working. Whatever.




This is my new blog. It's purpose is to encourage people to give their tax rebates to charity. Please go read it and tell me your thoughts. And here is where the Sort-of-Give-Away comes in. If you will leave a comment, either here or there, letting me know what you think about the idea, I will choose a winner randomly and do a blog post on the Give It Away blog devoted to the winner's favorite charity that falls within my guidelines on the Give It Away FAQ page. We'll keep this contest open until Wednesday at midnight, Central time. I do hope you'll play!

And just so you know, this will really be a wonderful gift for Poor Bud, because then I will have someone else to discuss this with and I won't have to talk his ear off day and night about it! See you can promote your favorite charity AND give Bud a birthday gift. Everyone wins!

Labels: Give It Away

So it was Spring Break this week. And a good one it was. Other than Tuesday, when we were looking for the ark, the weather has been great. Luke and Peyton have had a ton of time to play outside, to play with friends, to read, to watch movies, to play with Legos, and most importantly, to play Guitar Hero III.

I'm going to let it all hang out here and tell you that we allow far too much of this at our house. Because it is just that fun. If you have played this game on your Wii, then you will appreciate the fact that Luke can successfully play many of the songs on the "expert" level. If you haven't played it, well, let's just say that this confirms that we do indeed allow too much of this game.

Peyton didn't take to Guitar Hero quite as quickly and easily as Luke. But this week she started successfully completing songs on the "easy" level. Yesterday, she said, "Mom, now I can beat Hit Me With Your Best Shot, When You Were Young, Sunshine of Your Love, and Miss Murder."

"Wow," I said. "You're great at this game."

Peyton nodded her head and started walking away, and I heard her tell herself, "Oh yeah, she's growing up."

Labels: Homeschooling, My Troubled Children

You had no idea I spoke French did you? Neither did I.

So. We had some really good food at the rehearsal dinner, mostly due to the labor of my brother and sister-in-law, Gary and Heather. They prepared pulled pork, jicama slaw, baked beans (that had about a ton of bacon in them) and corn. Gary personally cut the corn off of 100 cobs the night before, then cooked the corn in what I can only assume was a disgusting amount of butter, green chilies and cilantro. Man, that was good corn.

I contributed two desserts. The first is Mexican Brownies. I just linked you to the recipe at Epicurious because I used it exactly. The brownies were very good. The brownie part was rich, but not too sweet. The topping adds the sweetness and vanilla flavor that really makes the brownie. I'll probably make these again, we really like them.

The second dessert was carrot cake mini-muffins, and here is the recipe I used. Some people like walnuts in them, but for my family that is the kiss of death, so I go without. If you like walnuts, chop up a cup and add them with the carrots.

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup canola oil
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups pureed cooked carrots - I just used a 1 lb. bag of peeled mini carrots and the measurement was close enough for government work
1 cup shredded coconut
3/4 cup crushed pineapple

You want to preheat your oven to 350 and generously spray your mini-muffin pans with spray cooking oil (you could greased them by hand, but you really have to get into the corners).

Combine flour, sugar, baking soda and cinnamon. Then add your oil, eggs and vanilla and beat well. Next fold in the carrots, coconut and pineapple.

Now pour about a tablespoon of batter into each muffin opening? hole? what do you call those?

Bake them for about 10-12 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Don't overdo it! Let them cool a bit and move the muffins to a tray.

Next you want to mix up

8 oz. of cream cheese at room temp
6 T of butter, unsalted, at room temp
3 cups of powdered sugar
1 tsp of vanilla
Juice of half a lemon

Now, you can spread this frosting on the muffins with a spreader, or take the easy way out, like I did. Take a disposable pastry bag, and fill it with your frosting. Clip off the end so you have about a 3/8 inch hole. Precision is everything - not. You don't need a pastry tip, just pipe your icing onto your muffins. It is fast and easy and not so messy. It won't look like Martha Stewart did it, but it won't look half bad, either.

When all of your muffins are frosted, hold the pastry bag over your mouth and squeeze the remaining frosting into it.

Enjoy!

Labels: Cooking

This weekend was just wonderful. My nephew, John married his sweetheart, Shannon. It was a beautiful, happy celebration of two young people starting out on a good road together.

The men in the wedding party:



On Saturday, my brother (uncle of the groom) and sister-in-law hosted the rehearsal dinner at their house and prepared a kickin' barbecue. It was soooooo good. The rest of us siblings prepared dessert and spent the afternoon helping get things ready for the event. I made carrot cake mini-muffins and mexican brownies. (Recipes to follow tomorrow.)



So, after the dinner, I was sitting at the kitchen table holding Romy, visiting with other various members of my family while clean-up was happening. From the living room I heard the voices of young "girls" spontaneously break into song. They were singing a sorority song or something like that, I guess. It was at that moment, that I realized that I am no longer one of the silly, starry-eyed bridesmaids singing without embarrassment. I am now one of the Ladies in the Kitchen. You know who I'm talking about. The Ladies in the Kitchen prepare the food for funerals at your church. They give a baby shower for every young woman at church - for the first baby only. They keep a phone tree and make food arrangements for families who are struck by illness.



It's a respectable title. But how did I get here? Just yesterday I was a bridesmaid, now I'm a Lady in the Kitchen. Part of the next generation. In the five seconds it took to fully realize the gravity of the situation, I aged 10 years. Really. My crow's feet dug deeper, my breasts inched a bit closer to my navel and a spider vein popped out right on the back of my calf.

Which explains why my Spanx were rolling up like a window shade all over the place. Now that I think of it, it explains why I was wearing Spanx at all.

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The GRP

Labels: Humiliation, Just for Fun, Spanx, The GRP

I'm always a bit squeamish about this. I see some of the battles out there on the internet, and I don't like that. If I'm going to throw down with you, I'd rather do it to your face, so I can be sure that you know that I still love you. I'm just very uncomfortable with internet arguing.

BUT, you may have noticed my Ron Paul button on the sidebar. I voted for him in the primary and I'll vote for him in November, even if I have to write him in. I'm currently reading a book he wrote called Freedom Under Siege. I wanted to share this quote with you because it says so much about what has gone wrong in our society:

Once the dictatorial power of the majority is accepted as legitimate, the days for the Republic are numbered - which is the case unless current trends are reversed. The individual, throughout this century, has suffered greatly from this dramatic change in attitude. The individual who dares to demand to be left alone and to assume responsibility for himself becomes a criminal. (emphasis mine)

That, in a nutshell, is why I'm voting for Ron Paul. And why I'll probably never vote for the person who will win the election again in my lifetime. I pray that things will change, but my hope does not lie with that possibility.

So there you have it, my political blog of the decade.

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The GRP

Labels: Politics, The GRP

I'm a better boy mom than girl mom. I'm sad to say it, but it's true. I'm terrible at doing hair. I don't like to shop, so my girls get t-shirts and sweats just like their brother.

But you know, it's not like I don't like those things, 'cause I do. In my mind I envision my girls with matching outfits and hairbows, with cute little Pottery Barn Kids girlie rooms. I just have a hard time pulling that sort of thing together.

So now that Peyton is 7 years old, I'm getting around to girling up her room. And it is turning out really cute. Really darn cute. It's still a WIP, but it's coming right along.

This bedroom used to be Bud's office, and Peyton's room was downstairs. Her room was a minty green and it was just awful. It seemed cute on the paint chip, but didn't translate. (Bud says that we've lost square footage in this house because of all the layers of paint I've added since we moved in. I have no idea what he's talking about.)

Well, with the baby coming, I wanted both kids and all their tiny chokable toys upstairs, so Peyton and Bud switched. But not before we ripped out the nasty carpet and replaced it with hardwoods, repainted her room in a very girly pink, and Bud installed beadboard wainscoating. It was very cute, but it stopped there.

Then I had Bud hang a couple of very stark IKEA shelves on Peyton's wall. Well, the modern lines were totally out of place in her old-fashioned room and they've been screaming at me since they were hung.

So a couple of weeks ago I did this:



Now, those pennants are not hung with masking tape, but with a cream colored grosgrain ribbon that looks EXACTLY LIKE masking tape. Not the look I was going for, but I have some pink ricrac that I intend to add on top of it to make it look less makeshift.

So that turned out so well, I made window treatments next:



Along with the cute name letters Peyton got for Christmas from the The Land of Nod, it's starting to look a bit more vintage:



I want to get some old victorian style glass knobs to hang that name from, but I haven't gotten around to that yet.

So finally, here's a full shot of the room.



Eventually we want to replace the blinds with off-white, because man, those are glaring! But it's hard to bring myself to replace perfectly good window blinds with a very slightly different color. Yeh, don't know about that.

The next thing is to make some of these cute bulletin board thingies from Pottery Barn and hang them on the closet doors. I can't bring myself to spend so much money on such a thing, but I sure do appreciate that they gave me the idea to make them. The final touch will be a "writing station". This was Peyton's request, a spot where she can keep all her good pencils, pens, and papers and spread out and write all of her cute little thoughts. That makes me so happy I just want to sing!

So that's my WIP. What's yours?

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The GRP

Labels: Crafts, Decorating, The GRP, Works in Progress

Okay, here's the thing. Romy didn't sleep for like, the last 8 months. It's hard to blog when your vision is blurred and one hand is holding an angry baby. But, lately Romy has revealed that she does indeed share genes with Bud and me and that sleeping is a good thing. Woo hoo! Now she sleeps at night with only one or maybe two wakings, and the bigger deal is she is taking TWO SOLID NAPS EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

I've had so much to tell you, but I just couldn't make it happen. Well, now I'm going to make it up to all two of you who still pop in around here.

Today, just to get the ball rolling again, I'm going to share what I'm good at.

FIVE THINGS I AM GOOD AT

1. Reading aloud. Particularly anything in the Hank the Cowdog series. It gives me the opportunity to use my many and varied hick accents. Plus, I can just use my own natural, sophisticated and subtle hick accent for the narrating. I'm very good at this.

2. Guitar Hero III. I've mentioned this before, but I am very good at it. Not as good as Luke, but good all the same.

3. Chicken Noodle Soup. I make a mean CNS. Call me if you're sick and I'll run some by. You'll be running a marathon the next day.

4. Finding a parking place. I don't know why this is, but it's true. Ask Bud. He marvels at this ability.

Aside: Do you find it odd that I am always the driver when we go out as a family? If we go out as a couple Bud drives, but as a family, I drive. Unless we're going on the Interstate, then Bud drives. I don't think he thinks I'm aggressive enough for the Interstate, and we don't have to park there, so he drives. But for your going out to a restaurant, stop at Home Depot, going to church kind of driving, I'm behind the wheel. Is that weird?


5. Remembering people. I'm very good at this. If I meet you once, I remember you. I used to think that I was just very unimpressive and nobody remembered me. Then I realized I am average-impressive, but I'm good at remembering people, so it seemed like nobody remembered me. It's relative. I hope that makes as much sense when you read it as it does when I think it. If not, don't worry. I'm the only one who will remember anyway.

What are you good at? Please share in the comments!

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I plan to be blogging regularly again now that my sweet baby is sleeping. Here are some things that I may be blogging about very soon:

opossums
freakish weather
a very exciting project upon which I am embarking
cute little girl room decorating
politics
religion
sex
some good recipes

It will be a good time, yes indeed!
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The GRP

Romy is going to start crawling in about two seconds. In fact, I can guarantee that she will be crawling by Saturday afternoon. How do I know this? Because on Saturday afternoon she and I will be at my brother's house trying to get things ready for my nephew's rehearsal dinner. I will need her to sit in one spot for this, so she is sure to start crawling by then. Good times! It's a good thing she is so darn cute. She smiles with her whole entire body. It will melt you right into a puddle.



Romy's picture reminded me of a movie. Here's a quote from it:

There ain't no better reading in the world than The Bible and Bowditch. They both learn you to steer a straight course.

Scroll over Romy for the movie. Luke and Peyton both loved this one!

Labels: Baby Talk, Blogging, Just for Fun, The GRP