Posted by louisa on 2005-12-02 20:01:57
Post Subject: art work
One idea I love is color photocopying nice artwork from classic kids books and then framing them... Inexpensive and a nice touch.. Making your own sheets from old sheets is easy.. I made crib fitted sheets for a friends.. craigslist.org is a great place to get second hand baby stuff.
Posted by op2myst on 2005-12-03 01:35:49
Post Subject:
Congratulations! How beautiful and lucky again!
I have a 14 year old boy and a 10 month old baby boy (a tad hesitant I know). Both has and have slept in our bed from the second week born (it tends to be a drag if you're breast feeding - up and down, up and down. Besides, snuggling with them is so sweet and rewarding). Both have/had a bassinet, crib, and playpen (mostly waisted money. Not the playpen nor the swing!) The oldest one didn't detach until he was almost 2. With him I was always re-doing his room. From primary colors, to Noah's ark, to Safari, to an aquarium theme, to jungle. I wish I did have pictures to show. I have to admit they all were pretty cute.
We(finally after renting) recently bought a house in TX coming from CA (about a year ago). I was so excited and very committed to painting the baby's new room a nautical theme (for him and I both). When he was conceived we lived on our boat in CA, so I thought it was kind of fitting, and for me, because it's soothing and would feel more like home.
Shamefully, however, to this day I haven't done anything with his room
other than use it to store all of the unnecessary stuff I got him while I was pregnant (ie. the crib, (he sleeps in our bed), changing table (easiest to change him on our bed, or on the floor), hamper (his clothes go in ours), diaper rack, (leave them in the pkg) etc.. You know..
Anyway, to get to the point. I was looking through the April (05) issue of Better Homes and Gardens and there is the coolest room I've ever seen. I had no idea there was such a thing as chalkboard paint. They painted 1 entire wall with it and created a theater around it with navy blue velvet curtains that rolled around a custom-made curved frame painted yellow with a blue stripe in the middle, the bottom and back side also painted blue (close to periwinkle blue). Hard wood floors, with a fun decorative rug, big bean bags and a little table set.
The ceiling to floor bookcase full of kids books was pretty cool too.
I realized at that moment that I want him to enjoy his room for a long long time. Not redo to the point he doesn't appreciate it like I did before. I want it to be his play room and his bedroom as well. I'm going to try to incorporate them both. Just not so babyish like I was imagining. As 10 months has gone by so, so fast. Not to mention 14 years.
I was encouraged by his great-aunt to do the Peanuts theme. Cute idea, but I'm no artist like she is. A bit out of my league.
It's a good thing that your nesting has come early. Once the little bundle is here, there's not much time for anything else. Remember?
Posted by aubrigail on 2005-02-02 19:31:16
Post Subject:
I go for the Newberry Award books (I love childrens and YA lit too), and here in Wyoming they have the "Indian Paintbrush Award" and I'm not sure if that's regional or not, but those are really good kids books too.
I've read some Hugo award winners before too. I just can't remember which books were the award winners (Ender's Game?), but if you like SciFi thats a good place to look.
I try to steer clear of the bestsellers list. I've been pretty disappointed by most of the fiction bestsellers I've read and with the one Oprah book I read (though she seems to be steering toward classics which may be better, and anyone who's getting more people to read is ok in my book!)
Maybe we should figure out a Get Crafty Award book list ;)
Posted by denali60610 on 2005-08-09 17:07:55
Post Subject:
ugh, so many books - problem is you cant knit and read at the same time! am i right?!?!? i do get some on audio, but it is just not the same as sitting down to read and get all involved.
i am intrigued by this master and margarita. hate to say i have not heard of it. but right now i am literally in the middle of jonathan strange - very good; the historian - also very good; and also am almost done with "the jane austen book club". if anyone has read this, i would be interested in getting your opinion
--and am listening to the bartimaeus book - the golem's eye (i think). if you like kids' books, like harry potter, his dark materials trilogy, etc., you would like this series.
for those of you who want to read more classics, i read "go down moses" by faulkner, in college. i enjoyed that one, although it was a bit difficult for me. i did read some hemingway a loonngg time ago. snows of kilamanjaro and some other short stories. but i would like to read "old man and the sea".
tipping the velvet is very good, sexy. sarah waters has a great way of describing scenes/imagery.
oh but here is my list of books that i have but have not read yet---
City of the Century - about chicago
Courtroom 302 - also about chicago
Lost in a Good Book - Jasper Fforde (sp?) - first one Jane Eyre was fun
the Tales of the Otori series, i read the first one, across the nightengale floor - beautiful books! anyone else read these?
and i know that i have a ton more laying around that i have just cant remember.!
Posted by mrs_stroozi on 2006-08-14 18:10:17
Post Subject:
My neighbor just gave me a pair of shoes that her mother gave HER because they didn't fit her. Didn't fit my neighbor and they don't fit me. I'm giving them to Good Will so no one has to walk out of anyone's life and someone who needs them can purchase a brand-new pair of Hush Puppies for dirt cheap. The person just needs to be a size 6 shoe.
My black cat is on my lap as I type this. We keep him inside the week before Halloween. This depresses him, but also may keep him alive. We're not superstitious, but other people are, and we don't want him to be hurt by them.
I go to sleep at night with an open book, especially a text book. When I was a kid I read that if you leave a book open overnight everything you've learned from it will drain out of your head and back into the book. Somehow it just caught me; I even close my kids' books when they leave them open at night. Bookmarked, of course!
I have a thing with gumball machines. I look over the contents carefully as I put in my quarter, and the color I forget to notice is ALWAYS the color of the gumball I get.
Posted by brdgt on 2007-08-27 11:14:05
Post Subject:
Even though I know it's not "supposed" to be kids books you know lots of youngins will read book 6 & 7 and i think she kills off more people than she needed to. Also you start to get numb to the deaths - like others have said by the time Lupin and Tonks died it didn't affect me like I would have expected.
Question: toward the end in the woods, after Harry comes back why didn't the Cruciatus curse Voldemort does on Harry work? Doesn't really get explained.
It's funny, Remus and Tonks affected me the most because it was after Harry found out he had to die and you think Teddy is going to grow up like Harry did - without parents or a godfather.
To the question: in the final duel, didn't Harry tell Voldemort that the wand wasn't working for him? I believe that after he killed Harry's horcrux his wand no longer worked.
Posted by CraftinFool on 2007-08-27 09:26:07
Post Subject:
Finally finished it Friday. Sure there were things I found irritating or confusing (definitely could have cut out some of the wandering around int he middle & fleshed out the epilogue) - but overall I thought it was fantastic!
Some random thoughts:
Hermione kicked a$$ in book 7! I thought she was as much a hero in this book as Harry, and in many ways twice the friend to him Ron was.
Even though I know it's not "supposed" to be kids books you know lots of youngins will read book 6 & 7 and i think she kills off more people than she needed to. Also you start to get numb to the deaths - like others have said by the time Lupin and Tonks died it didn't affect me like I would have expected.
Question: toward the end in the woods, after Harry comes back why didn't the Cruciatus curse Voldemort does on Harry work? Doesn't really get explained.
The only death scene of all the books that made me cry was Sirius. Oh boy did I bawl. None of the others were tearjerkers for me, I don't know if maybe she went easy on the audience b/c of child audience.
To me the most touching image of book 7 is when Harry & Hermione are at Harry's parents' grave and she senses that he starts feels badly that he has nothing to place on their graves, and she conjures a circle of Christmas roses in the air for him to place on their grave. What a beautiful image that was.
Posted by leCandypopRock on 2005-03-28 11:48:00
Post Subject:
jen, i understand your need for "smart" books. though i too love all the fun and light-hearted stuff a lot. my bookshelf has some academic stuff, but mostly pertaining to health and meditation and new age-y things. i read a lot of craft books, metaphysical books, cook books, gardening books, fairy tales (kiddy and more mature both) and TONS of children's lit. so every so often, i crave more heavy type things. i find a lot of feminist literature very, very entertaining AND academic... they actually make me feel smarter (in that my brain is becoming open to new ideas and perspectives). reading parts of 'the feminine mystique' especially was great. i love anything by bell hooks and i think i even consider the brash and sometimes sarcastically humourous 'bitch' (wurtzel) to be pretty brainy. maybe that's just me.
other stuff i didn't really come around til until after high school was kafka, camus, sartre, nietzsche... stuff that's all mentioned in the curriculum but i didn't really appreciate it til i was older. there are a ton of authors i really love that definately make way for heavier enjoyment reading (banana yoshimoto, sylvia plath, katherine davis and kurt vonnegut are my favorites), but there's still that element of fantasy and fiction that isn't so interwoven with academic flair that in a way i still consider that stuff to be kids books for the grown up me. ;)
Posted by CraftinFool on 2004-11-10 08:38:06
Post Subject: What's your dream job?
If you could do anything and $ was no object, what would you love to be doing every day?
Fo me, I think I would like to be a voice-over actor. Like, especially for a show like "The Simpsons". Wouldn't it be so much fun to be able to go to work wearing whatever you want and get to try out funny voices? That would rule.
Or maybe a nightclub singer. Stay up really late, croon out songs in a haze of smoke.
Also, it would be fun to write kids' books, I think. Create things that make kids happy.
Posted by andreacat on 2004-11-17 01:02:04
Post Subject:
oh, i would be that old wise woman living with her cats at the edge of the woods. you know, pretty self-sufficient, maybe a midwife, too. sounds scary to some, but to me, it's thrilling.
'till i became an old woman, i'd want to be what i'm in school for: a librarian! surrounded by books, all free for the taking. yay. the pay's not great but for me it's more than enough..
lately i've been thinking about maybe also being a children's book writer.. or at the least, reviewer so i'd get sent all those great new kids' books for free ;)
Posted by moon_lemming on 2005-05-25 14:08:27
Post Subject:
these are just the ones that I am actively adding to right now, and I'm not counting collections of stuff that I use to make other stuff (why yes, I'm a packrat, how did you guess?):
* postcards -- oldest collection, ever since the first vacation that I remember (Smoky Mountains)
* deer (especially reindeer) -- second oldest collection, I've been adding to it every now and then since I was a kid
* squished pennies from those machines
* kitschy owls -- I have a fondness for them because my mom used to have a modest collection going on, she got rid of all of them a while back though
* old craft books and old kids' books, especially Little Goldens
* stationery
* art from indie artists, especially small (read: affordable) pieces -- right now they're mostly all one style, but I'm sure my tastes will change at some point
* cute elephant drawings, none of that "safari elephant" stuff -- newest collection
* and I'm sort of collecting religious iconographic stuff (I'm lost as to correct terminology), I feel really drawn to it right now for some reason
Posted by Sewlittletime on 2005-07-22 01:43:01
Post Subject:
My DH and I each have our own bookcases. I've got them organized into categories, such as travel, language, comics. Fiction and non-fiction are pretty much mixed in together but sorted neatly. And my DH has his stack of D & D books. Cookbooks are on a bookshelf in an out-of-the-way corner of my kitchen. All my craft-related books and magazines are upstairs in my crafting space. The kids books are in their rooms.
Posted by Pokey on 2006-03-13 15:10:19
Post Subject:
I don't understand why people are so against Sci-Fi/Fantasy!!
Right now (in my opinion) lots of the popular culture sucks ass! Between Brittany Spears and Reality TV, anything even remotely creative is marginalized. TV producers wonder why shows like "LOST" have been such hits, and it's because we're tired of seeing people act like jack-asses on TV to attain their 5 min of fame.
I love sci-fi, and don't read as much of it as I'd like too.
Never be ashamed to like something that isn't considered popular. It seems to me that the same people who diss (sp?) Sci-Fi are the people who've never had an original idea or opinion in their life. They like the celebrities that Entertainment Tonight tells them to like, watch the movies with the highest marketing budgets, and read.....well lets face it, most of them probably can't or don't.
Wow. Sorry for the rant. Didn't realize I was that pissed.
As for the authors I have read;
Isaac Asimov "Robot" series and "Foundation" novels
I love Clive Barker and am totally into the Abarat series (I know they're kids books, but the stories are sooo imaginative!)
Looking forward to starting Ender's series soon.
I've been into readings by the Dalai Lama lately and am also reading a poli-sci/women's studies book called 'Women in Zones of Conflict' by Tami Amanda Jacoby.
Posted by Pokey on 2006-03-13 15:10:38
Post Subject:
I don't understand why people are so against Sci-Fi/Fantasy!!
Right now (in my opinion) lots of the popular culture sucks ass! Between Brittany Spears and Reality TV, anything even remotely creative is marginalized. TV producers wonder why shows like "LOST" have been such hits, and it's because we're tired of seeing people act like jack-asses on TV to attain their 5 min of fame.
I love sci-fi, and don't read as much of it as I'd like too.
Never be ashamed to like something that isn't considered popular. It seems to me that the same people who diss (sp?) Sci-Fi are the people who've never had an original idea or opinion in their life. They like the celebrities that Entertainment Tonight tells them to like, watch the movies with the highest marketing budgets, and read.....well lets face it, most of them probably can't or don't.
Wow. Sorry for the rant. Didn't realize I was that pissed.
As for the authors I have read;
Isaac Asimov "Robot" series and "Foundation" novels
I love Clive Barker and am totally into the Abarat series (I know they're kids books, but the stories are sooo imaginative!)
Looking forward to starting Ender's series soon.
I've been into readings by the Dalai Lama lately and am also reading a poli-sci/women's studies book called 'Women in Zones of Conflict' by Tami Amanda Jacoby.
