Bookishly Speaking

Books and reading material:

Here are some interesting things to share:
This is not my personal all time list but sourced) :
http://zenhabits.net/2007/03/best-all-time-childrens-books/

Here's a list for the librarians out there, stolen from my sil on Facebook that she stole from her friend Chuck: http://www.libraryjournal.com/blog/1090000309/post/1160046916.html
It's a list of the top 10 things to infuriate a librarian.

So yes, we are getting ready for that back to you know where time. A friend just put out there that she's decided to buy her kids a new book at the beginning and ending of school. What a great idea! How better to jump-start the enthusiasm? She chose these:

"I Don't want to go to School", "Is your Mama a Llama?", and "Clovis Crawfish and Friends". We're in a place where we totally appreciate Crawfish, and school starts real early.

I understand they are putting Maurice Sendak's book, "Where the Wild Things Are" to the big screen. Sigh... is Hollywood that desperate? THat's like putting "Harold and the Purple Crayon" (by Crockett Johnson) to film. Come on. It's not about spelling things out, it's about imagination. Will I go? Probably not... but I will send friends who will rate it for me :)

My 'Tween has read the Twilight books and likes the "all about me" kinds of books. It will be interesting to see how she feels about reading after the dreary year ahead is half through. My pick of her reading list is Animal Farm for it's humor. (That was a joke, there is Absolutely No Humor in that book... but more in there than any of the other blithe assignments.) Oh well there are lessons to be learned.

I am sticking to non-fiction drudgeries right now and hope to wrap my stuck in tar little mind around making and sticking to a budget (Ho, hum. Dreariness. I am going to have to build in budget items for "Ice Weasels" and "Glue Sticks" just to have some flexibility. (If you know me, you know I own about 4 states worth of glue sticks, or enough to supply a kindergarten class until 2045.) Money is the only thing I hate making lists about (unless it's what I want to buy. Of course).

So books... take me away and don't let me down! Here are some books that are wonderful for that starting school off right celebration!

I can beat 40 tigers today Seuss (Ok anything by Seuss. If you want a challenge, go for "Oh Say Can You Say?" My personal fave.)
Anything by Tommie DePaola
Anything by Maurice Sendak
Bread and Jam for Frances
Chrysanthemum
The Mango Tooth
M&M Counting Book (also cheerios, etc.)
and for older kids, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Enjoy!

What to do with all the Koolaid?

I get really tired of Blogger not liking the way I press the buttons I guess... here we go again!

As many of you know I recently became the owner of a great deal of Koolaid. About 400 packets. I was completely out and we’re going no soda this summer, and with mom and dad and four thirsty kids that’s a lot of koolaid.

My friend Carlie said, “That’s not enough Koolaid for the summer, it’s enough for the decade!”

So I got to thinking, and found this great website where they dyed silk scarves with koolaid. Aparently you can’t dye cotton with it, it’s a stain, and won’t set, but silk and wool work great. So I bought a bunch of white silk scarves and we went at it. We mixed a little water with the koolaid and painted or dunked. We had a lot of fun!

Another website you shouldn't miss

I have a few places I go when I need cheer. Here are two of them. Enjoy!

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

www.cakewrecks.com

Honestly, you need to laugh sometimes!

African Thunderstorm

New Bookshelf

I just found a new application, and thought I would check it out and share it with you. The idea of having an online bookshelf is just funny! I just can’t have enough books.

If you haven’t been to my house you may not have known this about me, but I have a serious book collection. If a collection is ten or more of similar objects grouped together in an organized fashion, then it’s a collection... though my friends have mentioned words like “obsessive” “Huge” and “bigger than the public library”.

I asked my boys to put together a database for me so my books could be catalogued. Ever since I was in first grade and learned about the big wooden box with the tiny drawers I have wanted to have books and organize them. Now that I have enough, we’re all technologically improved. It’s still a lot of work.... to get them all organized. The boys were very excited at first then realized I meant ALL the books... and they became a little wary, unwilling to even begin on a task that looks truly overwhelming. I thought it would still be good to get them organized and inventoried... but they are realistic with the amount of time it would take to accomplish this.

How nice if you could just get the books to pre-organize themselves (which originally I was thinking, buying library copies with the Dewey Decimal coding already conveniently completed. Ahhh.... Which brings me to Kindles. Of course the idea intrigued me immediately. You can download books to the Kindle instantly and carry them around with you. You can carry 20 or 30 books and even more in the same area a paperback used to fit. Ah, now that has possibilities! Since, however, I was raised on paper and ink, I still have doubts that reading from a screen will be quite as satisfying... I am a digital immigrant, after all, and though I do attempt to adjust and learn upcoming technology, it’s not my first language, and reading is for fun for me at this point. I did notice that the downloads are just as much as buying and shipping the same book at times, which of course does nothing to sway the consumer in me.

So until they make it impossible for me to say no, I will keep my old friends on the shelves and take good care of them, since I know they have taken good care of me, educating, entertaining, and enlightening me for many years past and hopefully for many years to come. Enjoy the shelf of my current reads and I will hopefully update it often!

Change can bring fear

It was amazing to see all the presidential stuff and how much Obama wanted to bring change. I think lots of us like some kind of change, but lots of change fast is usually not good. Driving is good, crashing is bad. Sometimes getting a lot of money at one time can even be bad. Who knows. Lots of people see the huge governmental changes and are freaking out. I have had some freaky moments too... Some of it comes to pass, some of it gets bogged down in bureaucracy. Sometimes people vote and judges overturn. Sometimes justice is not possible. You can't do everything for everybody. I am sure everyone has done something nice for someone who didn't say thank you, and you think twice about doing something nice for them again... or we measure who is deserving (ill children) and who isn't (non-working -by choice- healthy person with big screen TV). The government doesn't always have that concern. They want to shower everyone with money. Well, that's nice until you realize it's YOUR money getting showered on big-screen-tv man.
There are other things that upset people lately. The fear that Christianity is being driven out of our country. I got an email today about "in God we trust" not being on the presidential dollar coins. Ok, it's NOT on the coin face but it IS on the edge. Squeezing "God" onto the edge of the money doesn't seem very nice to some... it does look like the next step is OFF. It's a small thing.... but a change that looks ominous. But get real people! If you want to be scared, start reading up on what the value of the dollar is doing and what will happen if we go to the Amero and share currency with Mexico and Canada. If you want to be scared, look at the amount of debt China is holding.
Not to be completely depressing, and I am not a financial advice giver by any means, but there are a few things you can do to try to keep America from becoming something you don't recognize.
1. Read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Keep reading all the other amendments that have been put on the books.
2. Read some books by founding fathers and try to discover the intent they had to found our country on solid ground.
3. Start reading legislation. It looks like Chinese at first but try to muddle through and educate yourself. Pick a subject that is important to you or an amendment that stirs you and see what's being proposed that violates the spirit of the amendment... become educated and try to learn why the legislation is being proposed - and who will be hurt, and who will be helped by it.
4. Attend local government meetings. It won't always make sense at first but eventually you start to see the reasons why people do the things they do. Call them when you think they're wrong. At Public Forum time, ask your questions.
5. Look around at websites, news sites, and forums, you-tube etc. but remember it's not always factual.
6. Quit believing all the stupid emails gaged to make the masses terrified, and don't pass them along unless you are certain they are valid.
7. Writing your congressman may seem futile, but every letter counts. Some local leaders get a lot less mail than you might think. Go ahead and write. Please write in such a way that they want to respond to you and won't dismiss you as a "nut".
8. If you do get involved, be persistent and try to see it through. It takes time to figure out how to make legislation happen. It's different everywhere and in every level.

In the meantime I am still collecting dollar coins and watching the news on the value of our money. We've already been working at lowering our debt. It's always a good idea in any economy.

Food Storage

I gave a class at our local newspaper office about food storage and mailed out some info to some ladies who weren't able to attend. Here is a short thing to consider when planning, storing and buying food:

1. Expiration Dates
2. Will we eat it? Is it something in the rotation already?
3. Do we have the necessary other ingredients/equipment to make this food work?
4. How can we find a substitute for some short term storage food (like frozen chicken... canned or dehydrated chicken will work for some things)
5. Where am I going to put it?
6. Now that I'm stocking up how much is too much? How much is enough?
7. Does the food I have stored include items that require little or no cooking?
8. Have I considered an alternate fuel source?

The big problem for me is that my alternate fuel source is the grill. I love me some burned food. My dh has bbq'd chicken down to an art form. It's beyond science. But canned chicken isn't good on the grill and neither is anything else shelf stable (with the possible exception of Spam. We'll let you know.) Of course I can still boil water on the grill but it's not ideal. SO it's a work in progress.

Tip: Put a bay leaf in your flour and in your rice. It keeps any little nasty buggies from hatching somehow. Cool huh!