I Can't Complain

Crafty Sunday

Crafy Sunday doesn't have that nice alliterative thing going like Thursday Thirteen or Wordless Wednesday, but  I couldn't think of a word for crafty that starts with an S (though admittedly I didn't try for more than about 30 seconds).  I hadn't been crafting for the longest time, mostly because it was hard to squeeze in between work, the Bomber and house stuff, but a lot of that stuff has resolved, or at least evolved, and I'm finding myself in a crafty way again.  I even dragged out the knitting needles and am halfway through a pair of fingerless gloves. Of course, it's supposed to hit 73F here today, so they might be for next year...

Anyway, today I did a birthday card for the Bomber's friend Ben, who is apparently as dinosaur crazy as the Bomber.  I used my Cricut, Sure Cuts a Lot software and this free SVG file.

(And I just realized I forgot his tooth - I know I cut it, so maybe it's still floating around upstairs.)

To make a card, I took the main dino shape, flipped it and welded the two together at the head. Ialso had to cut one bump off the back dino's ridge so it would open.  This is a full view of the inside:

 

The text says "Hope your birthday is Dino-mite!" The Dino-mite part was also done on the Cricut with Sure Cuts a Lot. The font is Crazy Girlz Blonde.  The rest of the text was stamped and embossed. I had to tape off part of the stamp for the word birthday, and I'm a little bummed at how the embossing powder adhered to the word, but eh. It's for a five year old boy. If he looks at it for more than 30 seconds, I'll be shocked. Here's a closeup of the inside:

 

And because I'm apparently completely insane, last week I made a card for the little girl up the street. The one was all Cricut, with no software. The four is the George cartridge that comes with it, the cake is from Just Because Cards and the inside phrase is Doodletype.  The frosting on the cake was accented with a little bit of blue chalk. The candles on the cake were stamped, embossed and glitter glued.  The embossing got a little smeared, but since the birthday girl looked at it for about three nanoseconds before tearing into the present, I guess it's okay.

Outside:

Inside:

 

 

What I'm Wearing Wednesday: Blog Edition

My friend Stylishboots (which is not her real name, but she *is* quite stylish) started this over on Plurk, and I've been playing along, at least on Wednesdays that I have something fashionable to share. But it occurred to me this morning (as you may have noticed, I do all my best thinking in the morning - it's the best 4 minutes of my day), that I'm wasting a perfectly good blogging opportunity on those suckers over at Plurk.  Er, I mean, I really should share my *cough* excellent sense of style *cough* with a wider audience. So here's my What I'm Wearing Wednesday, B52OMOLISBE style (Luckily for me, the week ended yesterday, so this one's for this week.)

My WIWW pictures always feature  my “fabulous” (scare quotes intentional) yellow bathroom and the cat’s litter box. Nice, eh?  It’s the only place I can get even close to a full-length view, and that only by standing on the Bomber’s tooth-brushing stool.  And these pictures are always so very flattering.  The one that actually shows the outfit off best has me looking like Michelle Bachmann giving the Tea Bagger.. sorry, Tea Party response last night – I’m looking at the wrong camera…But I digress…

I normally like to include pictures of the separate pieces, but this outfit came almost entirely from outlet shopping in Gaffney.  The pants, black and white check flare legs, are from the Ann Taylor outlet, also known as Home of the Most Ridiculous Vanity Sizing, Ever. These fit, more or less, but I probably could have gone down a size, which would put me in a completely insane and unrealistic number.

The sweater is from the Banana Republic outlet – you can’t really tell from the picture, but the buttons are crystal, which adds just the right amount of sparkle, and goes nicely with the Hearts on Fire diamond earrings my most excellent husband got me for our anniversary.

Underneath the sweater, I have this velvet trimmed cami from Boden:

Shoes are nothing to write home about – just a pair of high heeled black boots. My cool black booties are missing the tip to one of the heels.

At Least It's Honest

I realized this morning that I forgot to B52OMOLISBE last week. Luckily I made up that rule about not feeling bad about it, so I'm not going to. I also wisely reserved the right to change the days in a week, so last week now officially ends today - SCORE, I got it in just under the wire! Go me!

Anyway, I woke up this morning and realized I missed last week needed to blog today, so I rifled through my pile of Things to Blog About (aka the junk in my craft room) and came up with something.  I've actually been hanging on to this since before the holidays, but the computer that the scanner is attached to at home is now so old and crotchety that you have to turn it on at least four days before you plan to use it, sacrifice a small virgin chicken and say the magic words while standing on your left foot and balancing the keyboard on your head. Given the creative time management skills I demonstrated above, you can see why this has been sitting in the junk pile for the better part of six weeks. But I digress...

As some of you may remember, I somehow got into someone's database as being over 65, and have been receiving a steady stream of AARP membership invitations, guaranteed life insurance sales pitches and the occasional solicitation from conservative seniors groups.  Early in December as part of this Bury Old (and Incorrectly Data-Entered as Old) People in Junk Mail Initiative, I received yet another solicitation for a Medicare Part B prescription plan. Unlike the usual ones, though, this one was prettied-up to look like a Christmas card. Sadly, the warmth of the holiday greeting was kind of ruined by this:

 

An advertisement? Really? It's a good thing they included that warning, isn't it?  Because the cheap paper, preprinted address, bar code, bulk mail permit and enclosed information about a prescription drug plan would NEVER have clued me in otherwise.

 

That Can't Possibly Be Cost-Effective

The other day I ordered a fancy screen protector and a neoprene sleeve for my iPad (because you never know when you might want to take it SCUBA diving*) from Amazon.  Because I order from Amazon so frequently, and because I have an unnatural love for Amazon Prime two-day shipping, I keep a bunch of small, silly things in my cart that I wouldn't bother ordering by themselves, and throw one or two in when I'm placing bigger orders.  So the other day, after I ordered the iPad stuff, I threw in a book for the Bomber. Yesterday the iPad stuff arrived, via UPS, in a perfectly reasonably sized box:

When I pulled the screen protector and the sleeve out of the shrink wrap, though, I noticed the book was not in the box. So I checked my Amazon account and discovered that it has been sent separately.  Okay, I know what you're saying... "so what? Amazon does that all that time."  And so they do.  But this was sent by FedEx Saturday Delivery, and I do not see how this:

   

could possibly be cost-effective.  Especially when you consider this:

and this:

And that's just the surcharge, people. On top of the regular FedEx delivery charge. Honestly, with business practices like this, I doubt this company will be in business much longer.**

 

 

* I KNOW I can't take my iPad SCUBA diving, even in a neoprene sleeve. For one thing, I don't know how to SCUBA dive. And I don't think the iPad does either.

** That was a JOKE, y'all. It's AMAZON. I KNOW they're not tanking anytime soon, my $1.50-plus-$25-shipping puzzle book notwithstanding.

Is It Me, Or Does This Seem Counterintuitive?

A while back we hired a cleaning person on the recommendation of a friend from the neighborhood who literally stood on the sidewalk and gushed (and I do mean gushed) about how hiring this woman had changed her life. And this is not a gushing type, folks. She's from Scranton, PA for goodness sake! Anyway, Larry and I had pretty much come to the end of our rope trying to keep our house clean, our almost-4 year old happy, our jobs done adequately and our brains still in our skulls.  That last thing was becoming increasingly difficult to achieve, so we hired the cleaner, and let me tell you folks... it changed my life. Seriously, after agreeing to go out with the random guy who called me at Eddie Bauer after I'd sold him a belt, and bringing the Bomber into the world, it was the best decision I'd ever made. 

Suddenly, the house was cleaner than it had ever been and it was made so by someone other than me or my overworked husband (who, I will be the first to admit, has a much lower threshold for dirt than I do, so he'd been doing the lion's share of the cleaning). It was a beautiful thing.  Time went on, and for various reasons Awesome Cleaning Lady had to move on, and suddenly, I realized: I cannot EVER go back to cleaning my own house. ACL ruined me forever. After a little scrambling, another friend gushingly recommended her cleaning company and by and by, we hired them.

As an aside, the company is owned by a fascinating Brazilian man who, before starting his own cleaning service, was performer in a German circus in South America, and a valet in Miami, FL. (Who knew people even still had valets?).  Anyway, the Brazilian Circus People (most of whom aren't actually Brazilian or former circus performers, but I do like the characters in my life to have catchy names) make poor old ACL look barely adequate. Don't get me wrong, she was awesome. They're just awesome-er.  On their first cleaning, which was a deep, no-holds-barred service, not only did they clean things that probably haven't been cleaned since we bought the house, but they made ROSES OUT OF MY TOILET PAPER.

Now I can die a happy woman.

So, the point of this really super-long introduction (yes, there is one) is this.  Since the very first day we hired ACL, and on through the Brazilian Circus People, we've always found ourselves running round like maniacs the day before they're scheduled to come, cleaning. For the cleaning people. Even the four year old sees the irony in this. Yesterday while I was frantically stuffing things into closets and trash bags, he said "Mommy, why are you cleaning if the people are coming tomorrow to clean?"  That's a good question, kid, but an informal poll of people I know who use cleaning services reveals that EVERYONE does this. I wonder if the cleaning people are sitting home laughing at us. "Can you just picture them picking up all that CRAP tonight? And have you seen how many Legos that kid has?!? And they have to find them all! Suckers!"  Is it me, or does anyone else ever stop in the middle of their whirlwind pre-cleaning-people-cleaning and wonder just what the hell they're doing?  I never wonder for long, though - i know I have to get everything cleaned up if I want to be found worthy of toilet paper roses.

There, that's my B52OMOLISBE for the week. One down, and 51, more or less, to go. Also, my friend and extremely talented photographer, Karen has decided to join in B52OMOLISBE (whoo! I've started a thing! Or do you need more than two people for a thing?), and her first post has absolutely amazing pictures of snowflakes. So go check them out, okay?

 

Blog...um...52. Or Possibly More. Or Less.

Two years ago I participated in Blog 365 and for six months I managed to post something on this blog every day.  But it was a lot of work trying to think of things to say that might be even remotely interesting, and I started to find it stressful after awhile.  Last year I hardly blogged at all, mostly because I have a preschooler who has performed some kind lobotomy-by-questions on me, and my brain pretty much only has sufficient functions left to keep my heart beating and my lungs moving.

Despite all that, I'm going to start this year with another attempt to blog more frequently, though I am not foolish enough to think I could possibly blog every day for a year. So instead, I'm just going to vow to try to blog at least once each week. If I do it more, that's great.  If I miss a week, I'm not going to beat myself up, but I will try to get one or more up the next week. I'm going to call it Blog 52. Or More. Or Less Isn't So Bad, Either. Catchy name, eh? I'm thinking of trademarking it.

Anyway, being a lawyer, I will now prescribe some rules for B52OMOLISBE, and then undoubtedly proceed to find a way around them:

Rule #1 - I will attempt to post something at least once each week.

Rule #2 - A week is the period from Sunday to Saturday, unless I decide it's not.

Rule #3 - Posts to Stinky Diapers don't count. Unless I decide they do.

Rule #4 - I reserve the right to post stuff about the Bomber here, instead of at Stinky Diapers, especially if I can't think of anything else to say after a particularly grueling week of "Mommy, what would happen if no one had feet?" type questions.

Rule #5 - Wordless Wednesdays, Thursday Thirteens and any other blogging gimmicks floating around out there count. Unless I decide they don't.

Rule #6 - I reserve the right ignore some or all of the above rules.

Rule #7 - This post doesn't count. Unless I can't think of anything else this week, in which case it does.

So there we go - one blog per week, more or less. And I invite anyone who is looking for a little more motivation than "eh, maybe I'll blog something this year" and a little less pressure than blogging something every day, to join me in B52OMOLISBE (tm).