Archive - March 2013

The Other Shoe

Ah, just were things were going so well.

Or were they?

We’ve been living with the shadow of a furlough hanging over our heads. Philip may or may not be forced to take one unpaid day a week until October. We should know for sure by the end of the month. But then again, thats what they said last month. It’s sure going to put a crimp in the finances.

Meanwhile, there is some work we’d like done on the house. Quite a bit, actually, but it is all cosmetic. We were discussing our options for the kitchen, which has new granite counters but the original boring, stock cabinets. The previous owners did that. I don’t know why they didn’t upgrade the cabinets, too. I’d like to remove the soffit and extend the cabinets up. Just as I was discussing this and looking up, I noticed it. The Bulge of Doom. Directly under a bathroom.

I pointed to it and said, “We have water damage.”

You could almost see years of life draining away from poor Philip.

Ever the optimistic and helpful one (stop laughing!) I suggested that since we’ll be tearing up the ceiling, it would be a good time to put in pot lights or a sun tube. Somehow that didn’t cheer him up.

I guess I shouldn’t mention that if we’ll be tearing up the bathroom floor, we should really get new bathroom cabinets and counter tops. And for continuity, we should probably do the other bathrooms, too.

Pinterest and Kids, A Cautionary Tale

Every so often I get obsessed with my blog stats. I track which posts are the most popular, what Google searches lead people to me, and what sites are linking to me. It’s fun for a couple of weeks and then I get distracted by something else.

One of the most popular Google searches that leads to my blog is “Boy Scout uniform”. The picture associated with that search is of Boo, grinning at the camera on the night he bridged over from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts.

It’s always bugged me just a little bit. I don’t know why. Maybe because it was more of a portrait type picture, rather than an action shot. Honestly, I’ve always struggled over the kinds of pictures to post of my children. I’ll go for long periods of time without posting pictures at all, but that gets boring. Then I’ll just post pictures in profile, or somehow not showing their whole face. But that gets tricky and involves a lot of staging pictures. Eventually I just go back to posting whatever picture suits my posts the best.

A couple of days ago, I discovered that someone had pinned that picture of Boo, the one of him in his Cub Scout uniform, on to Pinterest. That just did not sit right with me. I can’t even put into words why. In my head, someone searching for a picture of a BSA uniform would realize that this picture isn’t really what they were looking for, so they would move on. But seeing it on Pinterest, that’s more of a deliberate action. More “I want to remember this picture and refer back to it as often as I want”. Plus there is the social aspect of Pinterest, the sharing with your followers and the repinning of things over and over. Somehow, pinning a mom’s snapshot of her child just wasn’t what I wanted.

I left a comment under the picture, asking the person to remove it. After a day and a half it was still there, so I invoked my copyright and used the official form to have Pinterest remove it. They did so within just a few hours! I also deleted the picture from my blog.

So now I have to give quite a bit more thought to the kinds of pictures I put on my blog. This was never intended to be a family update kind of blog. It was always a way for me to tell my stories, as if I was sitting over coffee or knitting with you. Most of my stories are about my childrend and pictures enhance the story telling. But now I’ve had a wake-up call that others may use my pictures any way they want.

If you have a blog, do you post pictures of your kids? Of their faces, or in profile or somehow concealing their faces? How would you feel if you discovered your child’s picture on Pinterest?

Fiesta!

We have a dining room in our house, completely separate from the kitchen and the living room.  I love it!  We use it for dinner as often as possible, which is every day unless we are eating outside on the deck.  The only thing is that the dining room is pretty small (as they all seem to be in this area) and only has northern facing windows.  We have dark wood furniture in there.  It can be a pretty dark feeling room.

A few years ago I was a Longaberger consultant.  Sort of.  I signed up in Korea, where I didn’t have to make any quarterly sales minimums.  I got the consultant discount for myself without having any of the work!  At the time, my goal was to buy three sets of their dishware in red, white and blue.  I never got the white before we moved back to the States and my sweet little set up was over.

We used the red and blue Longaberger plates until the first time we had people over for an actual, grown-up, sit-down, dinner party.  I set the table with those dishes and the room looked so horribly dark and oppressive.  I knew I wanted something different, but I wasn’t sure what.

And I discovered Fiestaware!  I picked up some place settings from Kohl’s when they were on sale and I had a good coupon.  I got a few more place settings from my  mom for Christmas.  And then it was our turn to host the dinner party again and I grabbed the last place settings I needed.

Do you want to see my set table?

fiestaware table

The table linens are from Kohl’s, too.  They aren’t the best quality – the napkins aren’t completely square and two of the placemats are a few inches smaller than the others.  They came in a set, so I couldn’t choose. But I had a enough to set the smaller ones aside.  But doesn’t it look great?  Pumpkin Girl helped me fold the napkins and she set the table so that each place has a different color placemat, napkin, bowl and plate.

I love the way the table looks when it is set now, like it is time for a fiesta!

Personal Sock Club

I’m having my own personal sock of the month club, a la the Yarn Harlot. My goal is to match all the sock yarn in my stash with a pattern that I either already own or is available for free. Spend no money, knit more socks.

First up, watermelon self-patterning yarn.

watermelonsock

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