{Leapfrog TAG giveaway!}

If you have been following me on Twitter, you'll have no doubt noticed that I have been tweeting about National Reading Month and the Leapfrog TAG Reader giveaways going on. I'm posting it here on my blog for extra entries into the drawings - because I've wanted to get one of these for my kiddos but it's pretty cost prohibitive (almost $75, and then you have to buy books). So friends, fingers crossed for me, okay?

If you want to enter, click the links below. Leapfrog gave 10 (!!!) blogs the chance to give away one each! WOOOOOOT!

So Much More Than A Mom
Goddess In Progress
What About Mom?
Parenting by Trial and Error

My Sweet Baboo
Verbatim
Miss Britt

Stop, drop and blog

Callapidder Days
3Carnations

Thanks for putting up with the giveaway posts! In this economy, I think it's wise to take advantage of the generosity of a company - especially if it's for the educational benefit of our kiddos or makes me smile- smiles are good!

{This, That and the Other}

Click over to Simply This That and the Other for a great giveaway. I love this one because it's so cheery and happy! Makes me smile!

{ yyaaarrrrrrhhhhh! }

The result of a Daddy/Son day at the Field Museum. They went special, just to see the new Pirates exhibit, and the little SpacePirate fit right in with the all the people dressed as pirates!

{... 401K(ids) ...}

I've recently started attending a new MOPS meeting with a friend out here. The meetings sometimes have crafts, discussions or guest speakers. This week was a financial planner who came to speak with us.

I thought this was a great idea for a meeting, because I get the feeling that most of the money decisions in many homes are made by the man - and often times the wife is just left to sign paperwork. It's not the case here, but from talking with other women, I get that feeling.

One of the things he talked with us about was the importance of whole and term life insurance plans on ourselves. We often don't think about these things for ourselves (or just get the basic little plan the breadwinner's office offers)- but we have to ask - what do we want to happen to those we love should something happen to us? The main breadwinner usually gets a big plan on themselves - but what about the one who runs the home, takes care of the kids. For instance, if something should happen to me - there would be day care costs for two kids and housekeeping, just as a start. I know Xiris questions my housekeeping skills, but I don't think he understands how often I am wiping, cleaning, sorting, putting away, wiping some more etc etc etc. I don't think I have any life insurance plans on myself... I need to change this, soon.

Also, on the life insurance plans. It's important for us as parents to get whole life insurance plans for our children. If only for the simple fact that it will allow our children to get a their own life insurance plans when they are old enough - NO MATTER what their health. I haven't done this yet, but I will be doing it as soon as we can.

Now, the topic of this post? The financial planner also gave us tips to help our children understand the importance of money and saving, not using credit - that kind of thing. I thought this was a great talk - especially given the fact the many of the toys out there that involve money have gone to "credit" type applications... seriously, credit cards on monopoly, life, the barbie kitchen playset and even the little cash register toy.

He brought up an interesting idea. A 401K(ids) plan that you draw up with your kids. Make a deal with them. "For every penny you save, I will match it" And open a savings account to do this with. I would suggest setting a limit, just like a real 401K. $10 a month, or $1000 a year - whatever you decide. Then you can just keep matching as long as you decide - set a limit on that too - 18, 21 years old... My thoughts on this is - as well as teaching the importance of saving - there will be enough money there for a nice car or trip or something special. This gives the kids something to look forward to (sure when they are little they will just know they are saving, but as they get older, they'll get it), but also gives them the chance to make the choices of how much they'll put into savings.

It's definitely a plan I am going to start as soon as we are at that stage. The kiddos don't know what money is just yet - and I'm fine with that.

{alpaca flapper hat}

FINISHED! and I LOVE IT! (excuse the hair in desperate need of a cut!)

Pattern: Robin's Egg Blue Hat
Yarn: Misti Alpaca Chunky in Aquamarine
Button: picked by SpacePirate from JoAnn's. Ceramic and textured like the seed stitch.
Mods: cast on 76sts with size 9 needles, decreases changed as a result.

Thoughts: LOVE IT! Still a little loose, but it's warm and it covers my ears -which was the goal in the end! I think that I will undo my final rows and redo the final decreases. I wasn't paying attention to the shape while knitting/laughing at at Loopy, and ended up with a little nipple at the top... but really... what's wrong with a little nipple here and there! ;)

I'm working up a scarf to go along with it, with a texture that will compliment the band on this sweet little hat... not the same, but complimentary. I will post the pattern when it's done if it works out!

{...melt...}

A picture like this is enough to melt my heart. Especially after a week like I have had with these two. As soon as I turn my attention away from HER, she is pushing/shoving/hitting/terrorizing HIM. He is always climbing up on things, and subsequently falling off of said item - whacking his head, screaming and then getting up and doing it again. Add in the plethora of poopy diapers, screams and screechs, and the tiny apartment...

This photo shoot was just like that - but the guy was about to catch the few seconds when they weren't screaming at one another (however, note the paci in SpacePirate's mouth).

I'm bored tonight, so I played with GIMP.

{BBC's Book List}

BBC’s Book List

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Copy the list into a Note and BOLD those you have read, count ‘em up, compare tallies. This should be easy. I'm saying that books read in high school/college really count if you actually read them and not just the Cliffs Notes. Strutting and preening is optional.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men- John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


52! Wow. How about you?

{$#@ %$$%#@ !!!}

I knit a hat. A cute hat. A cute hat on the person who wrote the pattern. I'm no so sure about on me.

It didn't help that the thing was HUGE...
It didn't help that I decided to soak it even though I knew it was HUGE.


Oh. You noticed the WAS in there, did you?

Yep. Here it is now:

Remember it looked like this:

It now looks like this:
Someone PLEASE tell me that this is not permanent and that it'll poof back up and be like it was. I didn't use a whole hank for the hat - and I have a small ball left over.

I had planned on letting this dry, using the other hank for something different for my head - and then knitting this and the leftovers up into a one skein scarf. Am I making a mistake here?

On the "something new for my head" thing: Can anyone suggest a pattern for one skein
(108 yds) on size 10 needles (it's what I have here, and I don't want to drag both kids to Joanns in the snow).

Does anyone know if I can make it work as a Calorimetry or something similar?