The Good Stuff - October / November

I missed October completely and November almost slipped through my fingers as well. But here's a quickie update on a few recent good stuffs.

Grown-up Good Stuff

Super Glove - Oven mitts do the trick most of the time, but in some cases, like cookie sheets that need to be grabbed on the very edge, or pulling the bread machine pan out by a little handle, you need the option of less bulk and better dexterity. These Super Gloves are the best addition to my kitchen this month.

dafont.com - I've been working on a little project and needed some new font options. Cousine Katy hooked me up with this, my new favorite free font site. Love the category choices, rather than all fonts just alphabetical. Also love the Mormon advertisement running at the top when I last checked.

Amazon Universal Wish List Button - We really use Amazon.com wish lists in our family, especially around this time of year. Amazon does sell a ton of stuff but it doesn't always have the exact thing you want. Enter the new Universal Wish List button. It's a button you can add to your browser so that you can add anything from any website to your Amazon wish list. Let the possibilities begin!

Amish Friendship Bread - My friend Julia gave me a starter a few weeks ago, then on Saturday I made it into chocolate cinnamon "bread" (really more like delicious delectable cake!) Then I had a couple starters left and decided to keep them through at least one more cycle after finding all these variations and other things you can make with the starter. I think next go-round I'll make cinnamon rolls and cherry pistachio bread. YUM!

List of Top 100 Mystery books of all time - According to Mystery Writers of America, who probably know their stuff. Mysteries are my favorite "fun reading" so I was excited to find this list for some new recommendations. Of course I am spending less time reading these days than ever before, but that's not for a lack of lots and lots of books that look good!

Kid Good Stuff

Kids Craft Weekly - WOW. Thanks to the ineffably omni-talented Kat for getting me hooked on this website and *FREE* monthly e-newsletter. Awesome, easy, fun and totally crafty ideas! Unfortunately most are a little too messy or difficult for 25 nursery kids each Sunday, but perfect for me and my own. Now that Hazel rarely naps, she and I sometimes do afternoon crafts, like plastic-lid print-making or contact paper stained glass, both inspired by KCW. The current issue features Christmas cards and Advent activities. Plus she has a 20-page mini book all on Christmas crafts you can download for a mere $5 - so worth it!

Little Pea by Amy Krause Rosenthal - This is my (our) new favorite book. It's about Little Pea and his parents Mama Pea and Papa Pea. They do regular Pea things but Little Pea hates candy, and candy is what you have to eat for dinner when you're a Pea. He strikes a 5-bite deal with his parents, forces his 5 bites down and earns his favorite dessert - spinach! Simple, clean, adorable illustrations and the girls always laugh when I imitate the sounds and faces Little Pea makes when he forces his candy down. I read it to the nursery kids, too, and they thought it was hilarious. I see the same author/illustrator team has another book, Little Hoot, in which a young owl just wants to go to bed at a reasonable time like his friends, but nooooo, his parents make him stay up all night having fun. I love it.

Pop Fly by Justin Roberts - I seriously love this guy. This is our second CD by him and we listen to it all the time in the car, and of course the girls have their favorites: Pop Fly (about a kid in the outfield not paying attention to the game and panicking when a pop fly comes his way), Henrietta's Hair (about a girl who hated getting her hair combed so her mom gave up and all kinds of creepy crawlies moved in and lived in harmony), and Stay-at-Home Dad. I like the slower, more sentimental tunes like From Scratch (about Grandma's kitchen of course) and Fruit Jar (which I can't remember what it's about but I reall y like it.) Justin has got fans for life in this family, and hopefully we can catch his show here in January.

Bedbug Bible Gang - It's a Thursday afternoon in November. The girls are asking to watch a show, and I can't think of a single one I can stand to listen to right now. So I turn to the rarely-used *On-Demand cable feature to see what kind of free kids' shows there are besides Dora and Miss Spider. Perhaps something we've never seen before? Bingo! In a section called Inspiration On Demand is a show called The Bedbug Bible Gang. No idea what it is but let's give it a try. It's a cute little show with voices same as Veggie Tales, with a couple of bed bugs named Buzzer and Sparky that like to tell each other about Bible stories in rhyme, then do little comprehension activities or funny songs at a preschool level. It is an unbelievable hit around here. We only have 2 episodes on demand, and we all have them memorized by now, but I'm not annoyed yet. I mean, they're learning Bible stories! Hazel loves the story of Elijah and the widow who gave him her last meal. And the story of Zechariah being told by an angel they would have a son. In fact, the song that goes with it is impossible to shake. Sing along, please. To the tune of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt:

John will be Zechariah's son,

That angel said his name,

But Zech was full of doubt,

And so he could not shout,

Til the day that the newborn baby came:

JOHN! JOHN! JOHN! JOHN! JOHN! JOHN! JOHN!

(and repeat several times quieter, always shouting the last line.)

They have a bunch of DVD's out so I put one on the girls' wish list. We'll take any inspiration we can get around here.

The Good Stuff - August

Grown-up Good Stuff

Softspots Ivy Mary Jane shoes - This comes from my first guest good-stuffer, my sister Tona. This fall she starts a new tenure-track history professorship at Worcester State College. She bought these shoes at DSW as her perfect everyday nice work shoes. She says, "I like how they look a little like clogs. I also liked the suede cushions at the spots where it tends to rub my feet, at the heels and across the foot. I just love everything about them. And if you look on the bottom view you can see they have this really pretty design on the sole." Every fall I must admit I can't wear by Birkenstock sandals year round, so I must look for cool but sensible shoes, as hard as they are to find in a 9-1/2 W. Maybe I'll give these a spin.

Modal sheets by Pure Beech - We got a new bed so we needed new sheets. I agonized in the store - Egyptian cotton? Modal? Pima? Bamboo? But two restless kids don't let you agonize for long so I grabbed these because the sample swatch was unbelievably soft and the bittersweet chocolate color whispered sweet nothings to me. They're like silk and we love them.

SavvyAuntie.com - A cool site aimed at "P.A.N.K.s"— Professional Aunts with No Kids of their own. I used to be one, and I know lots of aunts totally involved in the lives and achievements of their nieces and nephews, so I think this site really fills a gap in the web world of parenting.

The dude they call Dipset (never mind his full name) who does randomly "beautiful" works of dance art/musical interpretation which he posts daily. I can really get behind shameless public dancing with abandon. One of my favorites is "Sittin' on the Dock" here. What's your favorite Dipset piece? Let us not be surprised he is Canadian.

Blogs with giveaways! All the Nie Nie Day auctions got me blog surfing waaaaaay more than I usually do, and it was actually kind of fun to discover some great ones. Like the ones that do frequent giveaways of cool stuff. I didn't realize this was so common, and I will be checking back to get in on the action at: Grosgrain and Suburose. Know of others?

Oriental Carpet Mouse"rugs" - I just like mine; it classes up the otherwise disaster that is my desktop. Who couldn't use more class?

Zyliss corn holders - Though corn on the cob season is coming to an end, I was glad to find these bright plastic holders with a smart link-together design that keeps you from getting poked in the drawer. Great for kids to hold a hot cob, but I use them, too! (Ed is too cool...)

Kid Good Stuff

The Dangerous Alphabet - I picked this up in a bookstore and it appealed immediately to my dark side. What else can you expect from an illustrator named Gris Grimly (please tell me this is a nom de plume...) I dearly wished Dave was there to share it with, but in all honestly I would probably not ever share it with an actual little kid, at least not one the right age for alphabet books. More like 10-year-old boys or something. But it's totally twisted and I want one for myself...

Spending so much time at my parents' house, the house where I grew up, and watching my girls play with the toys there, some of which were mine when I was little, has got me looking back a bit at the Good Stuff from my youth, so it's kind of retro...excuse me, "classic", month for Kid Good Stuff:

Weekly Reader Children's Books - In the late 70's and early 80's we were in the Weekly Reader book club and received a new book every week or month or something. I didn't realize until a few months ago that those books, many of them our very favorites of all time, were not widely published, but only available through the book club, which now no longer exists. So I've gotten a few of them through used sellers on Amazon and other sites, but I really think that 1) they should either be re-released, or 2) they should start up the club again, with equally good new books. I'm waiting. Some of my favorites were: Christina Katarina and the Box, Panda Cake, James the Jaguar and The Giant Jam Sandwich (which I guess you can get new.)

Fisher Price Classic Toys - Wandering the toy aisles of Target, I was stopped in my tracks when I saw three classic - can I say vintage? - toys from my youth, sitting on the shelf, brand new in boxes. The boxes were simple brown cardboard with black print that said something like Fisher Price Classics. They were a wind-up musical clock, a wind-up musical scrolling "television" and a rotary phone with eyes. They were just as the originals, with 60's looking decals and pictures. I grabbed them each in turn and played with them, letting the girls have turns too. I didn't buy them at the time, unsure if the girls would love them as I had. I came home to look them up online, but can't find them - not at Fisher Price, not at Target, nowhere online.

But it got me thinking what other toys do I remember that were really, really the bomb, and I thought of one. I was on Ebay instantaneously; 2 hours later had paid my bill; 2 days later, received this:
Yes, it's a real record player. Real as in it has real records, but it's a music box. You wind it up with a knob, put a record on, and place the arm on. It houses, instead of a needle, a set of prongs that make tones as they flick over the bumps on the record, just like a music box. The 5 records are 2-sided so there are 10 songs total. The girls (and I) love it and I keep it on a high shelf - a "special toy" that requires permission to use.

Anyone else remember this?

What other classic toys were totally the best that you wish your kids could have?

For the girls, August has been all about "making things," especially with
Playdoh and...
Pizza dough!

The Good Stuff - July

Holy crap, it's already the end of July? Ginger had croup last week so I was out of commission all week and suddenly the month is over! (And I'm off to see George Michael tonight!) This month's good stuff is admittedly unbalanced; I guess I haven't been shopping for the kids much. But here are a couple of fun things for your perusal. Sit back and have a Good Stuff moment.

Grown-up Good Stuff

World Wide Fred - I don't even know how to describe or sum up this ultra funky quirky Rhode Island home products company. Neither do they. It all started when I saw Chopstick Kids in the Old Forge Hardware Store; I didn't buy any then but made a note of the company to look up later; it looked like stuff I could get into. And sure enough it's like Pandora's Box of cool stuff I don't need but want to buy for other people as awesome gifts. I don't even know what to highlight, there are so many interesting things. Some are kind of gross and immature like Stuck Up wad-of-gum-looking magnets while others are just fun and useful like the Equal Measure measuring cup. I also like the How Tie, the Tooth, Borrow My Pen, Batterfinger, and the To-Do Tattoo, just to name a few. Let me know what you like on here. This is definitely the place to go next time you don't know what to get someone!

GasBuddy.com - You go to the website, type in your zip code, and it tells you where the cheapest gas is near you. Must be working, too, because I typed in my zip code and found that the two cheapest stations nearby ($3.83 and $3.93) sold out of regular last night.

Woman's Day Month of Menus - At our family reunion in June Tona's cabin had a stack of old magazines on an end table that I found myself flipping through a couple of times. Two of the magazines - a Woman's Day and a Good Housekeeping - had so many good recipes I wanted to try that I brought them home for further inspection. Nothing against them, but I've never spent much time going through magazines like that before, though of course I find that I am now the target audience. There were some great articles and tips (I skipped Dr. Phil's secrets of a great marriage on principle, though it was probably good too), but the recipes really hooked me. I especially loved that Woman's Day had a calendar page with literally a month of menus - a quick meal description on each day that could be whipped up without a long recipe. For example, "Chicken drumsticks brushed with orange marmalade and sprinkled with chili powder, baked until done. Serve with steamed broccoli and squeezed lemon." Easy but I might not have thought of it on my own. Every Sunday meal is big with the intention of using leftovers later in the week, and every Monday is meatless. They do it every month, factor in seasonal ingredients and the best part is you can get them online without buying the magazine. As always I'm trying to expand my cooking repertoire but it's too tiring to try long new recipes every night. I am printing off and checking these Months of Menus for quick and easy family-friendly ideas to mix in with our regulars.

Jungle Speed - Dave brought this to the reunion. I was hesitant because my reflexes are shot in general and even worse late at night when we play games. But one night all 4 siblings and 4 spouses found ourselves around Maren's kitchen table ready to play a game. Dave whipped it out and I admit it was awesome fun, especially with so many players. An abbreviated game description: Jungle Speed requires a steady hand - which can be hard to maintain during the many fits of maniacal laughter. The wooden Totem sits in the middle of the table, waiting for the player with the fastest reflexes to snatch it up and win the game. Each turn, all of the players reveal one of their cards. If two cards are identical, those players must make a grab for the Totem. The faster player then gives their cards to their unfortunate adversary. To add to the difficulty, certain cards are almost identical, which can trick a hapless player into grabbing the Totem by mistake - a grave error. Other cards force all players to make a grab at once, change the method of play, or otherwise add to the difficulty.

Archer Farms Multigrain Cereal - Archer Farms strikes again! This time they drew me in with their sleek new packaging. I used to buy their Blueberry & Flaxseed Granola all the time - it's delicious - but this time I was checking for something lower in fat and high in fiber. Simply named Multigrain Cereal has 190 calories, 2.5 grams of fat, 10 grams of protein and 8 grams of fiber per 1 cup serving (none of this 1/2-cup serving size you find on some cereals). That's only 3 Weight Watchers points for those of you wondering. Plus it's totally yummy - puffed wheat, kamut, millet, brown rice & oats so it's kind of granola-ish but lightly sweetened with honey and molasses and lacking the weight and fat of typical granola.

Kid Good Stuff

Grandpa's Dollhouse - In the late 1970's my Grandpa Younce built this gorgeous, solid dollhouse for me and my sisters, then loaded it into his car and drove it from Oregon to Virginia. For years and years we played with it, then as we got older my parents carefully stored it. About 6 or 7 years ago they moved it up to Tona's house in Massachusetts for my niece Halle. And now it has been passed to us. Mom and Dad brought it over last week, with a bag full of furniture, and one or both girls sit and play with it at least once a day. Of course Ginger likes to climb on it but also watches Hazel arrange furniture and interact the dolls, and is beginning to imitate her. There seems nothing more natural for children to do than play with a doll house, practicing and playing out the things they are experiencing in their own lives. It warms my heart to see my girls playing with the same one that captured my imagination 30 years ago.

Fine Art for Kids from Oopsy Daisy - Parent conceived and owned, this collection of over 60o pieces by more than 50 artists is full of creative, whimsical, modern and unusual art for children. I have been totally focused on home decor and design this month, trying to set ourselves up, and carefully considering options for the blank walls in Hazel's room and other places around the house. Naturally the art is not cheap but it's ok because as I save up I need the time to decide what to get. Hazel is interested in maps and they have several to choose from. Plus a portion of profits go to charities that assist children. Here are a few, but not all, of my favorites:

Pop Garden by Andrea Cobb

Exploring the World from A to Z by Jenny Kostecki
Oh Say Can You See by Jill McDonald

Kite Day by Libby Ellis
For the girls this month it's been all about the new back yard! Favorites are:

Stone Temples...
...and planting flowers!

The Good Stuff - April

Grown-up Good Stuff

Address Stamps from Expressionery.com - I've wanted a cool address stamp for like 10 years, that's how lame I am. Just get one, I know. But we're never in a place long enough to justify it, or I suddenly feel too cheap or whatever. So then I just print return address labels from the computer and can never find them when I need them. Well mark my words, when we move I'm totally getting one...but which one? I think I like "Gabby" best but "Maegen" and "Larrabee" are cute, too...

My New Glasses - Love the vision insurance that gets me an exam and new specs once a year. This year I was bummed at the optician's selection and almost settled for a lesser choice, then found these beauts in the bottom back of a rack somewhere - totally me, totally disco.

Weight Watchers GIANT Chocolate Cookies & Cream Bar - I usually like my ice cream rich, creamy and non-diet, but I'm certainly open to healthier options as long as they taste awesome. I'm a sucker for this kind of cookie crumb coated treat, so I gave them a try. These are going to be regulars in my freezer from now on.

GoMod.com - I love to dream of my Jetsons-like future home, but in the meantime I'm just looking. This website is the self-proclaimed "best shops, free classified ads, links directory and resources for collecting modern design and retro collectibles. Esquire magazine calls GOMOD 'The Net's premiere portal for midcentury modern collectibles.'" It does have fun stuff to look at and links to many other mod, mod, mod sites, like this one.

BabyCheapskate - The name pretty much says it all - a blog all about coupons, deals and savings on baby, kid and household stuff. Like one big gathering place for penny pinching moms, swapping great finds and deals. Definitely bookmark this one.

The Amazing OpenX - One of those darn "D'oh!" inventions - wish I'd thought of it and was sitting at home making my millions right now. As it is, many people in my life will be getting this bandaid-saver as a gift this year.

Kid Good Stuff

Water WOW! Doodle books - These have been the major lifesaver since the Magna Doodle fell out of favor about 8 months ago. We have about 5 of these - I've found them at Target, Michael's, Kohl's, Century 21 and Toys R Us randomly. You "color" on the pages with a water-filled pen and the white coating disappears to reveal the picture beneath. Best part of course is the white comes back when it dries so you can use it over and over until your 1-year-old scratches the coating off, but even then you can still use them if you're too much of a deadbeat mom to get new ones, like me. They're quiet, they're inexpensive, they're reusable, they're CLEAN, they're portable and only two parts to lose. The pens they come with, though, are kind of crap, so I get Aqua Doodle pens at Target - they're much better.

Moolka.com European Toys - I especially admire the ecotot coatrack but like I'm ever paying $140 for it. (It's no trashcan.)

Mice Squeak, We Speak by Tommy dePaola - Possibly the PERFECT board book, coming from a speech-language pathologist's as well as a Mom's point of view. DePaola's awesome, colorful, creative art set to a simple animal sounds poem by Arnold Shapiro:

Cats purr. Lions roar. Owls hoot. Bears snore.
Crickets creak. Mice squeak. Sheep baa. But I SPEAK!
Monkeys chatter. Cows moo. Ducks quack. Doves coo.
Pigs squeal. Horses neigh. Chickens cluck. But I SAY!
Flies hum. Dogs growl. Bats screech. Coyotes howl.
Frogs croak. Parrots squawk. Bees buzz. But I TALK!

It's got everything - repetition, rhythm, rhyme, colors, language, onomatopoeia, synonyms and some excellent sound verbs. My kids love it and so do I.

GALLOP! A Scanimation Picture Book by Rufus Seder - My mom gave this to Hazel for her birthday; it's very awesome. I like to play with it as much as she does. It's kind of hard to explain so I borrow from a Washington Post review: "[This book makes] an obvious case for itself with ooh-ah graphics, using trademarked Scanimation, a low-tech marvel of sliding paper and stripes. Turn the page, and you set black-and-white pictures of various animals into motion - that is, if certain short people ever let you turn the page. Your kids will elbow you out of the way. They will also elbow each other out of the way."

But honestly? All kids really need are

RIBBONS...

...and a COLANDER!

Baby You Can Buy My Blog

Last summer I told Dave I wanted a web service that could download my blog and print it in a book so I could have a nice, permanent hard copy with all the pictures and comments. He told me it doesn't exist. Au contraire.

For Christmas my sister-in-law Natalee, with help from sister-in-law Shanda and her sister, made my girls an awesome personalized ABC book. They used a scrapbooking software for the page layouts, did quotes and scriptures for the words and used family and other photos for the pictures. I asked Shanda where you get something like that printed, and she said Blurb.com. Then she said,

"You can also publish your blog."

It's awesome. You can make your own cookbook, poetry book, blog book, whatever you want. Just give your login and it "slurps" your blog into one of 15 layout formats, then you can manually tweak things to your liking. You can also choose whether to include comments, and whether to print hyperlinks as footnotes. Then, once you finish and self-publish, you have the option to place your book in the Blurb bookstore for other people to buy, and you can buy other people's books.

I want a hard copy of my blog because it's like a journal, a record of me, for me. But seeing Natalee's book and the other books in the bookstore show that the possibilities are endless. Publish your own children's book, a family cookbook, or portfolio.

You can even buy my blog.

Water Survey

Hi there. We were on vacation for 2 weeks but back now. Don't worry, I have many posts regarding the trip and other things I thought about while on the trip in the works, but in the meantime here's a quick survey for you. This is from my friend who's a Civil Engineering professor in the middle east, with a special interest in water (supply, treatment, etc.)

Here's what he says:

Now that I live in a place where water is so scarce, I’m doing some preliminary research on people’s perception of water quality, and how that impacts the amount of water they use. One specific area of interest is in whether (and why) people prefer bottled water vs. tap water. If you have a few moments, I’d appreciate it if you could complete the survey. Here it is.

It takes about 7 minutes and there are no trick questions. He's trying to get a wide range of respondents so pass it along.