Roar!

He really isn't the most perfect dinosaur, one of his hind legs is shorter than the other, and he's just a few hours old and is sort of coming undone in some places already, but Garrett really loves him and I guess that's all that matters. Tomorrow though, I have to get Bones Bones (the name of this dinosaur) away from his owner, to make some repair work. I learned in this project, that knitting a t. Rex is a lot like knitting socks, except socks don't have legs and tails. I think I'll work on socks this winter. Next up, is a purple stegosaurus for Natalie. Happy knitting!

Crafty, Crafty

Well, not really, but I have to keep the kids busy somehow this summer. So yesterday I woke up in the mood to do a craft project or two with them. It's a challenge, because Natalie isn't one for letting you prepare for anything. She's constantly hounding and asking questions and chattering along, and really people, it's tiring. I don't mean to come across as impatient, I'm not, but she's one to push buttons, that's all I'm saying. Anywho, I browsed http://www.joann.com/ and Highlights for Kids (thank GOD for my mother who sent me that link, and then another one, http://www.activitytv.com/, which is kind of lame, but that's where we found the flip flop idea. Of course, going out to the fabric store, and then Target and getting something to eat for lunch (I did NOT get a shaken iced tea from Starbucks and I really should have) took up most of the day, but we did get the flip flops made, and the glue dried over night.






We got our flip flops at the aforementioned Joann store, which has them on sale now for $1.33/pair. Actually, they have all their kids' craft stuff on sale now, for 40% off I think. We headed over to the notions/trims section and Garrett picked out the black & white checkerboard print and Natalie picked out the pink & green pom-poms, the trims were $1.99/yard each, and I bought 2/3 of a yard of each (2 feet). Garrett was going for a race car motif to his, but they didn't have any race car buttons, so he has a blue car and a red airplane (it could be a rocket too, I can't really tell) on his flip flops. Natalie opted for green hearts, but they had some big fake diamonds that would be awesome if you wanted to spend $10 on them, which I did not. I just used a tacky glue to glue the ribbon/trim down with, but I imagine hot glue would work just as well. You'll want to heat the cut ends of the trim so they won't fray, or use something like fray check if you can't heat the ends. Oh, and we took glitter glue and put that on the sides of the flip flops, just a thin line and spread it out with a finger, of course that is optional, but kids like glitter. I'm sure Shane won't appreciate that his son has glittery flip flops, but that's HIS problem, not MINE. :-D

Ok, there's my cheap craft idea for this week. Since today the weather was so nice, it's supposed to get hot & humid again tomorrow, we went to the playground today. All was fine until Garrett smacked some kid, and he (Garrett) then had a big, massive tantrum, so we left, after apologizing and making sure the little boy was ok. I'm the mother to an apparent bully. :-X

Mummers!

Last night we headed up to the park to listen to the Ferko String Band. The kids played on the playground and listened to the unique sounds that string bands have. Natalie & Garrett even did a little dancing, though once they started thinking about what they were doing, they started to get goofy.

Tea

I'm so glad summer is here, for many reasons of course, but one is iced tea. I love unsweetened iced tea more than anything, though I realize that's unheard of for you Southerners! So yesterday, while picking up a few things at Target, I swung by the Starbucks and bought a grande shaken iced tea. Made with black tea (and no sugar) and then I guess they shake the hell out of it. I missed that part because Natalie had to go to the bathroom. Anyway, SO GOOD! It was really smooth and really tasty. I think next time I need the bigger size though, the grande was gone in no time.

WWYD?

Yes, you. Feel free to tell me what you'd do in comments. Anywho.

We have this big picnic table, given that we no longer have the room for it, we decided to sell it. Put ads on Craigslist and www.kajiji.com, as well as in the local pennysaver. It's a great table, in excellent condition, yadda, yadda, yadda. I got a few nibbles here and there but nothing fruitful ever came of them. So I get the bright idea to list the sucker on eBay, with local pick up as the ONLY option for getting the table. I didn't really think I'd get a bidder, but I figured it was at least worth a shot. Lo and behold, I did get a bidder, and the auction closed and voila, I thought the table was sold. Contact the bidder and as it turns out, he's in CA. Argghh! He was quite apologetic though and we just mutually agreed to cancel the transaction, I got my final value fee back and he did not get a non-paying bidder strike against him since it was all just a mistake. He even offered me $50 for my trouble, but I didn't feel like that was necessary and I politely declined his offer. This was Saturday (6/14).

Last night (6/17) I checked my emails before I went to bed as I would normally do, and there's an email from PayPal telling me that the guy has sent me an instant payment, and it's far more than the $50 he initally offered, and I had turned it down anyway, so WHY is he sending me money? I'm not a paranoid person normally, but I'm so afraid that this is somehow going to come back to bite me in the ass. After conferring with the loopies, I sent him a quick email, I figured really that he mistakenly sent me $150, but really, who does that? Fortunately for me, he's got an AOL email addy so I put a return receipt requested on the email and sent it off. Didn't hear back from him, checked my sent mail status tonight and I see that he's deleted my email. Ok, WTF? Yes I KNOW I'm not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, but this does seem so unusual, right? I don't want to come across as bragging, but maybe this is Karma calling, repaying me for a previous good work? My friend Dianne suggested that maybe he simply has money that he wants to share.

So, dear readership, however small you may be, I pose the question to you. What would you do?

A Shameless Plug

for me! www.bowartsbows.com Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, but it's my blog people, so I can advertise for whomever I wish, including myself! A bit of a year ago I started making hair bows for Natalie, because I was just spending too much money on hair bows for her. Juli found directions on eBay and linked me and away I went. After tweaking things a bit, and getting tons of compliments on the bows, peppered with remarks like "You should really sell these you know." I decided to go out on my own and do it. I started out on the Hyena Cart, which is the online equivalent of a seller's marketplace, only most of the sellers are WAHMS (work-at-home-moms) and most of what is available there is hand made - cloth diapers, bath & body products, hair bows, jewelry, baby and kids' clothes, etc. It's a unique little forum, and it worked for me for a bit. Recently though, I realized that it wasn't working out so well for me, my listings disappeared after 3 months and getting them back was nightmarish, and so I set off again, this time to Tony at whamshoppes for hosting and Amanda at digishoppe for graphics and here I am. So I started adding products this morning, and I'll continue to add stuff this week. I realize that really the only people who read this blog are my girlfriends and they are all well aware of the existance of www.bowartsbows.com, but I'm excited and therefore blogging about it!

No more Top Chef this year, though tonight is the reunion show, right? I'm so happy that Stephanie won, I really thought of her as the dark horse, and while I feel like Richard was equally talented and deserving, I just wanted Stephanie to win so badly. How cool is it though that Top Chef is coming to NYC?! Finally!! I admit that I'm totally biased, but really, NYC is the greatest city in the world, chock full of culinary talent, it's about freaking time. Maybe my chef will be on tv for it too, if Chef Tom ever needs a fill-in judge! Shane can't compete in it, given his employer, and I think he probably wouldn't go for it anyway, since competing on tv is really not his style, lol. Oh well!

Better Late Then Never

A Happy Belated Father's Day to my chef, thanks babe, for all you've done and all you continue to do!

WHAT?!

Ok people. Antonia totally got robbed. I don't care if her pigeon peas were al dente, how on EARTH could the judges have possibly kept Miserable Lisa in place of her?????????? And then Lisa was so bitchy to Richard and Stephanie, who were clearly stupefied that she was still there with them. WTF?????