These lovely little darlings are free to download from Teri Pettit! I found them at Found It. Love It by Divine Caroline - one of my very favorite daily emails. I haven't talked my daughter into actually playing with any of the paper dolls we've gotten her her entire life, but I'm holding out hope!
You can print out her entire tea party. Oh, I'm in heaven!
I know this book has been out for ages - I've given up thinking I'm going to read ANYthing hot off the presses - but holy crap it is funny!!! I am laughing out loud reading it! I read at night while everyone else is asleep and I have tears streaming down my face and I'm biting my lips together to keep from laughing so loud that I wake everyone up.
Her next book comes out March 10th and I might just be reading it "hot off the presses".
Do you have words or phrases that are part of your consciousness - part of you - but you haven't spoken them since you were a child? Surprise plates are that for me. When I was very young my brother and I would make "surprise plates" for each other. If either of us was feeling low or ill, we would put a little of this and a little of that on a plate with a paper towel over it to hide its contents until the other one would whip off the towel and say "SURPRISE!" 
I was just explaining to someone about how I had JUST had a baby and had to answer, "well... he is 15 months old, actually" when asked. It has been 15 months since I worked out regularly. Yes, I worked out every single day of my pregnancy and then QUIT. Maybe if I had this gorgeous wrap to snuggle in after a workout I'd do it again? Seriously. Gorgeous.
I sat down and ripped out every recipe I think would work for us, put them in plastic sheet protectors,
and made a binder for all of our family meals. I can take them out and move them around by the week or by dish or by season - anything I want. .JPG)
It stays in my recipe binder and every Sunday night I'm sitting down to plan out the week's meals. If I can swing it I go grocery shopping for the week on Sunday, so far it has been Monday morning. This will work!!!
I know tons of you plan out your menu's for the week ahead - do you have any great tips to help me!?
Download 7 free ORIGINAL Christmas songs today!! The Hipwaders, Brady Rymer, Didi Pop, Gustafer Yellowgold, Princess Katie and Racer Steve, Rock Daddy Rock, and David Tobocman all share NEW Christmas songs!!
A Tudor Feast at Christmas Knowledge Network - oh my. Oh my, oh my, oh my. As crazy as it sounds, this sounds like absolute heaven to me! I would give almost anything to be able to be part of a project like this. I love my kitchenaid mixer. I love my Cuisinart food processor. I love my fresh market! Still, the idea of making everything from scratch from the ORIGINAL recipes makes my skin tingle. It was made a few years ago and seems to be a bit hard to find. If you can find it on t.v. in your area, don't miss it! If you happen to be in the area of Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, you can attend a recreation!! Yes, this is where they filmed Pride and Prejudice (deep breath).
My parents found the cards at the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, but I couldn't find them on their website. If you can visit the store, buy them there, otherwise they are here at the MoMA store. Or if you can VISIT the MoMA store, oh my gosh go, there! Each matching pair of cards has one complete image of the original painting and one close up shot of it. My kids love them and are learning all of these great works of art! We have our own names for a lot of them at this point - for instance The Seed of Areoi is "Naked Lady On A Rock", and The Jungle is "Moon Head Guy". But don't think for a minute that I'm not planning to teach them about each and every painting, the artist and the year they were painted as they grow up!! Think about the images from books you read as a child - these images will be part of their childhood. (Yes, my arm hurts from patting myself on the back...) We've been playing Old Master (Old Maid) and go fish all week and loving it. Usually, Girl with Ball is our Old Maid because, really, it's only fair.
LOVE these mixes, too. They are just real ingredients: no trans fats, no high fructose corn syrup, no refined sugar, no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives. They even have low fat, low cholesterol, and vegan mixes. Mixes are SO much easier, but I hate what they bring with them - these let go of all of the guilt and make just really, really yummy cookies and brownies and more. I chose the mudslinger brownies with a sweet mixing spoon for our Mr. H's stocking, and the snow angel sugar cookies with her own mixing spoon, too, for Miss Mae. I know they will love them!
I just gave my kids' teachers their Christmas presents. I know some of them celebrate Christmas, I'm pretty sure some of them don't. But we do, so we get to give them presents. I adore Attic Journals. I adore Michelle and Miguel who make them. They are the most lovely vintage books, that would have otherwise been lost, turned into journals - the PERFECT gift for teachers - and everyone else. I found children's encyclopedias turned into journals and wrote personal notes in each one. Miss Mae dictated notes in a couple of them and drew pictures in all of them. I hope they inspire these awesome teacher people to take time for themselves and write their thoughts, or even give them a place to keep their to do lists. I wish I had taken a photo of my teetering stack, but the photo above is one I stole from Attic Journal's website.
I've been making these little Towel Tags for my family for a while now, and finally decided to share them. With two adults showering every day and 3 little ones taking baths every night, we create a LOT of laundry. Even though we have lots of different colors of towels, it seems impossible for us to remember whose is whose.
I sit here happily grateful for my lovely little family. How did I get so lucky? I think my feeling are best expressed by my son's Lego representation of our family. My mom should be very proud of her little hottie image and my husband is not quite as gangsta as the outfit implies, but does tend toward baseball caps on the weekends!
