Putting this on my hubby's to do list.  I'D LOVE this!  I'd have to tell him it was for the kids or he might not agree to build it.  I'm sure I could be gracious enough to allow him to pick top bunk or bottom bunk.   ;)

How much yarn do I have?

Why do I need to measure yarn you ask?   Well, for several reasons actually.  Sure, I know what you are thinking.  You think I'm nuts because I'm worried about how much yarn I have when the skein tells me on the label.  BUT, what if you can't read the label or what if you only use part of a skein and now you have half a skein of Malabrigo but not exactly sure how much and therefore can't decide what your options are.  If you lost the label and don't remember the weight, you can check this post.

In all seriousness, my dilemma comes from my good friend Vickie who lives in China and sends me yarn occasionally.

Wonderful friend to have I can assure you, however I cannot read the labels so the yarn has been sitting for a while simply because I don't know the fiber, the weight or the yardage.  All very important things to know.   :)

I wanted to make a cat bed so I went digging through my stash and found this wonderful stripy yarn:

I did the wrap trick and it is a bulky yarn, but how much do I have?   

I generally do this one of two ways depending on how lazy I am.  

You can wrap the yarn around two objects like two feet from a kitchen chair:

With this method, you count the number of wraps.  In this case my chair is aprox 14" wide.  I wrapped it around about 230 times, give or take since the yarn was very knotted and my kids were in and out of the kitchen.  So let's do some math!   230 (wraps) x 14 (14" is the width of the chair legs)= 3220       Now, 3220/36 (36" in a yard)= 89 yards.  Remember this is approximate.  I always err on the side of a lower # because I'd rather have more yarn than I need than not enough.  

You could also buy a yarn counter but they can be expensive.    I went to Academy and high tailed it to the fishing department and purchased a Fishing Line Meter (click the link to see what it looks like).   The one from Academy was $14.99, either one is way better than $50 online for a yarn counter!   

Remember I said "approximately 230 wraps"?   In order to blog about this I brought my yarn wrapped chair up to my winder.  I hooked my fishing line meter to it and wound the yarn and wallah I have 276 feet which is 92 yards.  Pretty darn close to the 89 yards I came up with earlier.  

What is the weight of my yarn?

Being that I'm on a yarn diet, I've been hitting my stash yarn pretty heavily, which led me to the conundrum about the yarn from China.

First, I had to decide what weight my yarn was.  Luckily I found several charts that gave me general consensus of WPI.  (Wraps Per Inch).

You'll need the following:

1. ruler
2. pencil or another similar item that you can mark on
3. chart

Notch the inch measurement on your pencil or similar item.  Now wrap your yarn around the item and count how many times your yarn wraps around.  Make sure you aren't pulling too tight or the counts will be off.  And it doesn't matter what item you use as long as it is the same size (ie, it doesn't taper).  You are measuring how many wraps make an inch and not the length of the yarn.  It is kind of confusing, but it does work.  

So you see, that the grey yarn wrapped more than 18 times so it is indeed a lace weight yarn.  Confirmation!   

Too little too late

I have several friends that have or had problems with their husbands and all around the main problem is too little too late.

How does this make any sense in the brain of the male?   Your wife communicates that things are not going right and wants to talk about what changes can be made and they pay no attention.  Then after years and years of fighting about the same shit we are done talking.  We were annoyed to begin with, then we were angry and the next step is indifference.

I just don't understand it.

Waffle Iron Bacon?

I'll admit it.  I'm a freak for cool appliances.  I can't help myself.

Himself was watching some "man show" and they suggested cooking bacon in the waffle iron.  He immediately asked:  "How cool is that?".  I just looked at him and inwardly shook my head.  The only reason he knows where the stove is is because that's where he very occasionally hangs up the tea towel.    So now he's going to cook bacon in a waffle iron?  (No one reads this but if you do and you are a woman I'm sure you see the potential pitfalls of this bacon method.)

Fine.  He thinks it is cool, however he has shared the show and the idea with the two children who REALLY think this would be a good idea.  Hrumph.

So here we go.  They've been talking about this for several weeks and it has not once occurred to him to actually get the waffle iron out to try it.  The kids will not let up so here I go.  Mind you, I know how this is going to turn out, but the willing (if reluctant) participant that I am, I figure what the heck.  It is only going to be a lot of cleaning.  What the heck.  (I might add that Himself has something to do this morning so he isn't even here to witness which means he'll still think this is a good idea)

That is two slices of bacon cut up with scissors.

Pros:

1. Cooked the bacon evenly
2. kept the splatter to a minimum
3. kids thought it was fun

Cons:

1. only two at a time
2. kids may think it is fun but it really isn't a participatory sport
3. grease pools in the waffle iron
4. waffle irons are made for waffles and thus there is no spout to pour out the grease

I was so concerned with the grease spilling out of my waffle iron that I forgot to take a photo at the end when the bacon was finished.  

The below method is still better I think.  I also have a microwave thingy that is nice but when I'm making bacon for everyone then I use the pan.  If it is just me, I use the microwave thingy.

The waffle iron has been emptied and wiped out thoroughly, but is still not clean.  *sigh*   Maybe I'll make some bacon flavored waffles.

Tomorrow Eggs in a sandwich maker!

Shrimp: It's whats for dinner

Here is a nice recipe for shrimp that we all enjoyed.  Well, except for the 6 year old who refuses to eat any seafood.

What you'll need:

1. lemon
2. butter
3. shrimp
4. seasoning (I used Italian and Mediterranean and salt)

Cover a cookie sheet with tin foil or use a 13 x 9 pan.

Cut up some butter and thinly slice some lemons

Layer the shrimp on top then add seasoning.

Bake in the oven on 350 for about 15 - 20 minutes.  That's it.

I served it with broccoli but if you aren't doing low carb, the sauce would be good with rice or pasta.

This recipe has well over 100K shares.  Please link back to my blog and don't share the recipe as your own.  

End of Year Teacher Gifts

My kids were leaving our school (I may blog about this later) and I wanted to do something special for the teachers.  After being there for 8 years, I wanted their current teachers to know that we appreciated them and also I wanted them to remember my kids.

I figured I'd make a tutorial and so I took photos along the way so it might help others.

One thing I'll mention that this takes a while to dry so make sure you don't wait till the night before to decide to start the project.












What you'll need:

1. Two packs of pencils or a box or two of crayons
2. Glue (elmers, hot or tacky)
3. Cardstock 
4. Picture frame 1 inch thick or shadow boxes.  (I used 1" thick frames from Hobby Lobby for $10)  Here is a link for them on amazon.  I was sort of doing mine last minute and didn't have time to purchase on amazon.  
5. Scissors  (to cut your paper to the size of your frame)

My oldest daughter was in 6th grade at the time and I didn't think the crayons would be appropriate so I used pencils.  

First, open word and use the letter that you need.  You can do first or last it doesn't matter.  I used 600 or 650 pt and you do this by highlighting the font size and typing it in and then you have to click "enter" for it to work. 

Highlight your letter then go to FORMAT --> FONT ---> and click OUTLINE.  This will make an outline of your letter.  

Find another font you like and type the name.  It doesn't matter what font you use, whatever you like.  Mess around with it until you get it the way you like.  As you can see, I did one in portrait mode and one in landscape mode.  Play around with your margin sizes as well.  

Print it on cardstock.    Because of the size of the letter, I had to run the page through for the letter and then again for the name.  I printed one on a regular sheet of paper and one on nice cardstock.  I used the regular paper as my working project and the cardstock as the final one.  Between the crayons and the pencils, you don't want to put marks on the nice cardstock.

For the pencils I used outside branch clippers.  You could use a handsaw or whatever you have handy. I didn't use any sandpaper but if you are a perfectionist, you might want to have some on hand to file down some edges.  It is easier to sharpen then cut.  You can use a sharpie to mark a dot where you need to clip the pencil and then just glue the pencil with the dot side down so you don't see it.  

For the crayons, I found that if I poked a slight hole in the crayon with a sharp knife, the crayon broke exactly where I needed it to.  

Make sure you cut them long/wide enough that they cover the outline of the letter that you've printed.  

Lay them out on your working paper because you WILL move them around.  :)  

Once you get everything the way you want them, it is time for glue.  I used good ole Elmers School Glue.  You could use hot glue or tacky glue.  Tacky glue would have probably been a better bet but mine turned out fine with Elmer's. 

Then I laid out my pencils / crayons.  With the elmers I could still move them around a bit and since it dries clear, I didn't have to worry so much about staining.

I placed a heavy text book on top of it while it dried.  Then I put it in the frame (or shadow box if that is what you use) and printed a photo of my daugter(s) and had them write a little note which I glued to the back.  Just so the teacher would remember them.  

That's it.  Hope this helps you guys!

I Am Mom Enough

So I have to weigh in on the Time Magazine controversy and I'm not going to include the cover photo here in my blog.  Why is breast feeding such a controversial topic?  All aspects of breast feeding seem to start arguments and I just don't get it.

Why is this particular "controversy" with the mother and not with Time for using that photo which was an obvious attempt to sell magazines?  I'm extremely annoyed with Time for using that photo and most especially for the headline "Are you mom enough?".  What the freaking hell does one have to do with the other?   And to pit moms against each other on Mother's Day Weekend was just icing on the cake.  Mommy Wars?   No thanks!

Am I mom enough for what?   To nurse my child?   To nurse my children past 6 months?   To nurse a 3 year old on the cover of Time?   The question is rude and frankly (not to copy from The Honey Badger), but I don't give a shit.

Will this Time cover ultimately be helpful or harmful?   The general consensus is that this does not do anything good for "the cause".  What cause is that?    I was originally of the mind that it did more harm than good by making extended breast-feeding mothers look like freaks who couldn't cut the apron cords.  But after several conversations with friends, good friends and acquaintances where I piped in and said that my 12 year old was nursed for 23 months and my 6 year old nursed until she self-weaned at around 3, I think I might have changed my mind RE:  is the cover harmful.

By people like me standing up and saying that we did it, I think it takes away the freakishness that the cover photo brings out.  The conversation stops, and people look at me as if trying to find the freakishness that they didn't know existed before.  (at least not on this particular topic...there is the knitting after all)  It was never a secret in my family that we nursed past 6 months but being that my girls are older now, it isn't something that comes up in conversation a whole lot.

Ultimately I'm told that no press is bad press so I hope it is the same for this topic of conversation.  Maybe people who thought Jamie Grumet was a freak after seeing the cover will now talk about "the controversy" and someone like me will pipe up and tell our story.  And just maybe the rest of us will put a personal face (two beautiful little faces in my case) to the controversy.

I was way more militant about breast feeding when my oldest was little and I'm way more relaxed about it now.  If it is right for your family then great and if it isn't, then that's ok too.  I mean, we are all moms and as long as we love our kids and try to do the best for them, the logistics don't really matter so much do they?   If you give your child cow's milk at 10 months and I nurse my daughter until she is 3 is there really going to be any difference when they are in their 40's?

I weaned my 12 year old when she was 23 months because she was not a sleeper and wanted to get up and be nursed back to sleep throughout the night.  By 23 months I had had enough and we weaned her.  Now my 6 year old only ever got up once to nurse in the middle of the night when she was an infant and was generally a much better nurser than her sister.  We decided that we'd see if it worked for us that she self wean and she did around age 3.

Nursing a toddler and nursing a baby are two totally different things and I think the Time cover makes people think that the 3 year old is nursing like an infant would.  I do not know the family but I'm guessing that is not the case.  Nursing a baby (this varies a LOT) but generally is about every 2 hours and their only sustenance.  Nursing a toddler on the other hand is mainly about comfort for the child.  They are eating other foods and from my experience just need a bit of comfort to get through the day and eventually when they self wean each of these nursing sessions drops off one at a time.  They get shorter and shorter and ended up only being morning and night for us.  My little one dropped the morning one and so the bedtime one was last to go.  Since I never offered and it was always driven by her needs the night nursing just sort of got sporadic and eventually one day I realized that she was weaned.  That's how it happens.  That's why I say "around age 3" because I don't know when the exact last time she nursed was.  I weaned my 12 year old and so I know she was 23 months at the time.

My oldest rubbed the inside of my arm while she nursed and did so for years after weaning while I was putting her to sleep.

My little one still to this day (she's 6), does what she calls "belly to belly" with me.  Actually she'll do B2B with any family member that will let her, but mostly me.  She still needs that skin to skin comfort.  She raises her shirt to expose her belly and she raises my shirt to expose my belly and we sit together skin to skin for a minute or so.  She rubs my belly with her hand sometimes.  In the morning before she leaves for school, she raises my shirt and just lays her head on my stomach for a few seconds and then she's off for the day.

If extended nursing isn't for you than it isn't for you but that does not make the rest of us freaks.  Until there are personal faces for these people to put to their idea of what extended breast feeding is, then they will never understand.  Having a "nurse your toddler in public day" won't help either.  I believe it stands to those of us who did it, to speak up and put our faces to the term "extended breast feeding" to the people who know us.

I'll leave you with this photo of a button that I STILL have and used to have pinned to my diaper bag.

Frozen Bourbon and Coke?

One of my all time favorite things is bourbon and coke.  LOVE it.  I don't generally drink it because, well, I don't want to be that girl.  You know the one.  The one who cringes when she puts the trash out because of all the glass clinking.  My trash clinks (they don't do recycling here!) but it is wine bottles which makes me feel only marginally better about myself than a trash can full of bourbon bottles.  Right?

I ran across this restaurant with this photo:

I'll let that sink in a minute until you can wipe up the drool and get back to me.
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So, if you are anything like me, you immediately did this:

Is it worth driving 7 hours?  Ummm....Yes!   However that is a couple tanks of gas, a hotel room and food for an $8 (yes, I'm getting the large...don't judge me!) frozen bourbon and coke.   We are currently in budget mode so this is going to take some convincing (of myself) on my part.

My birthday is this summer!    I could use my birthday as an excuse to go and spend all that money.   OR (light bulb moment) I could make my own!   I immediately go to Craigslist to see how much a frozen coke machine is or a frozen daiquiri machine is.  About $1500 is the answer.  If I could buy one of those I could make them all the time!  

Then I go to amazon because, well, amazon has everything.  (hear the angels singing?)

Needless to say I will report back to let you know how these turn out.  

Ovate - Oh how I love Thee

I love to knit.  Everyone who knows me knows this.  However, I generally don't wear the things I knit.  In an effort to wear more things I decided shawls were a good bet since I'm often chilly.

During the American Express Small Business Weekend, I purchase two skeins of Malabrigo Rasta.  I've been holding on to them for the perfect pattern and basically just fondling them in the meantime.

Most patterns using Rasta are cowls and I'm not really a cowl kind of girl.  Plus, lets face it, I live in Louisiana and we rarely have the weather for a cowl.  Finally found a pattern that I liked called Ovate thanks to my friend Mitzi.

The Ovate is probably the first pattern that I completed that I love.  LOVE!   Here are some photos and I highly recommend the pattern.  While it isn't mindless knitting, it isn't hard and the end result is fabulous.

Men! They just don't get it! (Christian Grey)

Leave it to men to take the complete wrong points away from the Fifty Shades Series.  I once repeated a friends mantra to my husband that "foreplay starts in the morning".  Meaning, if you want sex later, be nice to me earlier.  What did he take from that statement?   He smacked me on the ass while I was making breakfast for the kids.  Men, they just don't get it.

I read the Twilight Series and fell in love with Edward Cullen.  Then I read The Black Dagger Brotherhood Series and realized that Edward is a toddler.   :)   I loved those books, but alas, I didn't fall in love with any particular characters.  I read Outlander and absolutely love Jamie Fraser (although without the red hair).

My most recent main character that I'm obsessed with is Christian Grey.  After reading message boards about this series, I found one particular comment odd:

Not only do I have to act like a vampire to get my wife's attention, but now I have to be controlling and abusive?

Ok.  Men just don't get it.  At all.  I love this series, but not because Christian hits Ana.  I don't like his overly controlling manner either.  But E L James makes us have empathy for Christian because of his abusive childhood.  (awwwww)  We feel for the boy that he was, just like Ana does.  But what makes him sexy?

• I like that, first and foremost, he makes One Hundred Thousand Dollars an hour!   That goes a long way into making his stalking tendencies a little easier to take.   I think if we are being honest with ourselves, many will agree.  
• I sort of like his stalker tendencies.  I mean, who doesn't want someone looking out for you and constantly worried about your welfare?   I would love it if my husband bought the company that I believed in and that I was working for!   She got the job on her own.  
• The sex.  This is a harder one.  I have the same hard limits as Ana, and probably more than she does.  What we as women like about it is that it is spontaneous and they aren't doing the same thing over and over and over again.  In talking to a lot of my friends, this is a common theme among them.  The lack of spontaneity.  The same old dance time and again.  Throw me a curve ball every now and then.  (I'm not talking about butt plugs or canes btw)   Kiss me passionately out of the blue for no reason.  Kiss me while standing up for a change.  Things like that.  
• Ultimately, it is about feeling that we are cherished.  

What is it about these characters that I like so much?  It is their undying love for the woman they love.  Their ability to handle any situation that is thrown at them.  And, of course, they are all rich.  Well, Jamie isn't rich, but he seems to be able to trade for anything Clair may need.  And, they all absolutely cherish their women.

So it isn't the controlling and the abuse that we like about the books.  It is the absolute devotion he shows to her and the spontaneity in their sex lives that we enjoy.   Oh, and the idea of simultaneous orgasms doesn't hurt either.  

I don't have time to save the world

I hope none of my teacher friends read this because I'm about to make them pretty mad.  Alas, I'll revel in the fact that no one reads this but me so I can feel free to say what I want.  

Before I start my rant, I'd like to go on record saying that I like teachers individually.  I think they get a raw deal because their hands are tied.  Society blames teachers, when in reality, teachers have little to do with the education outcome because they have nothing to do with the damage prior to the child entering the classroom.  (I copied that last line from someone else in a message board)

I don't understand the need to save the world all at once.  I'm a "one day at a time" kind of girl.  Here in Louisiana, the governor is proposing a giant education reform bill and the teachers are PISSED!   I get that not everyone is going to agree all of the time, but come on people, don't you think that we need to do something?  

Standing around with your arms crossed and stamping your foot is doing no one any good.  Teachers seem to always be against everything.  There is always a reason not to take action.  I don't get it.  Try it, see if it works.  Nothing is working now, so what's the problem with throwing several ideas out there to see what does work?   Nope, they are against everything YET they say they want what's better for the kids.

I've had several discussions on facebook about it and they are like little parrots repeating the same party line.  No, they can't do it.  No, it won't work.  No, it isn't fair.   With attitudes like that, I can see why.

What they don't like:  

1)  Teacher accountability.  HELLO?????   Why wouldn't you be accountable for the minds you are shaping?

2)   Teacher raises will no longer be automatic:   I hate to repeat my self but....  Seriously?   In what other profession are the raises based on longevity and not accountability?   Welcome to the real world ladies.  (I say that as a stay at home mom LOL)

3)  No more tenure:   I never ever agreed with tenure so I'm ok with this point too.  Why should teachers, especially teachers, be able to get in a point in their career where they cannot be fired?  Who in their right mind thinks this is ok?

There are more, but I'll stop there.  The problems are so much more than two-fold.

1)  Teachers appear to be against everything

2)  Teachers take their cues from the teacher unions.

3)  Teachers should pick their spokespeople more carefully.  Case in point:

4)  Here in America, we have an epidemic of poor parenting.  They can only do so much with what they are given.

5)  More bureaucracy is not the answer.

If you are going to hold teachers accountable via kids test scores, then test them in August and again in May to see how far they've come in a year.  

I do not know what the answer is but I feel like we have to start somewhere.  Just saying no to everything is going to change nothing.

Erotica - To Read List

I'll never remember the list so I'm putting it here so I'll remember the titles recommended to me.


FIfty Shades of Grey  - Read x 2.  Great!  

Tipping The Velvet by Sarah Waters - this delicious, steamy debut novel chronicles the adventures of Nan King, who begins life as an oyster girl in the provincial seaside town of Whitstable and whose fortunes are forever changed when she falls in love with a cross-dressing music-hall singer named Miss Kitty Butler. When Kitty is called up to London for an engagement on "Grease Paint Avenue, " Nan follows as her dresser and secret lover, and, soon after, dons trousers herself and joins the act.

Anais Nin's Little Birds or Delta of Venus.  Little birds are short stores.  Also on my list from this author is one of her journals: Henry and June.  I've heard Henry and June is very good and based on her own experiences while she was having an affair with a husband and wife.  

Anne Rice's The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty.   I'm told this is pretty good.  He wakes her but not the same way we've all read the fairy tale.   :)

Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill.  This one is about a woman who works for a guy (named Grey!) who spanks her one day and what happens thereafter.