Little Nuthin Links

Another day of little "nuthins" since I have nuthin of real value to show you or report.

I was messing around on Digg this morning (I adore this site) and found a few amusing links for ya:

1. And you just thought those nursery rhymes were safe to tell your children. History is a wonderful thing.

2. I've been to a couple of these (Edinburgh Castle - been there twice, and the Tower of London) and I cheated that I didn't see any ghosts.

3. Just for the sweet tooth. From smitten kitchen, a fantastic food blog.

4. You know you feel like this when that one certain child pushes your very last button.

Speaking of that child, we attended an honors day ceremony for his older brother and while I was sitting around wasting time I pointed the camera at the Youngest trying to get a cute pic of him. First I got this:

and then he immediately made this face:

Misc. Nuthins

For those who care to know:

I am not a "grill", I am a Mommy. Apparently, Mommies are not allowed to be girls.


We also keep food in the "re-frissa-bator"

and the favorite color of the minute around here is "Orangen".

The News

Knitting News: I've only got like three repeats to go on my Clever Little Shawl to go. Woohoo!

Carding/Spinning News: I'm still carding that damn brown stuff together. It's taking forever. I have about 4 more batts to go before the next step of carding. The first step was to mix the different fibers together. The next step consists of splitting the batts and carding them together randomly in order to get the most homogeneous mix that I can get without overcarding. I could probably skip that step, but I don't want to.

I'm going to have around 20 batts that are approximately 2 ounces a piece. If you think that I'm complaining now, you just wait until the spinning all starts. I'm planning a 3 ply dk weight yarn and will be mixing and matching bobbins then like I'm mixing and matching batts now. This could take all year to complete at this rate.

Kitchen renovation news: Haven't done a thing since the last report. Oh wait, I did order new knobs and pulls and they came in today. This was super inexpensive which is the only way I was going to get new ones. I had a total of 31 knobs to replace. There are a crap load of cabinets and drawers in my kitchen, it's a fairly big kitchen. I went to ebuilderdirect.com and ordered these beautiful birdcage style oil rubbed bronze knobs and pulls and got them for about $1.50 a piece. Click on the link to look at the ones I picked. Love 'em! They look fantastic with the chandelier we already have in the kitchen.

I'm hoping to get back into the primering/painting stuff sometime tomorrow or Friday. Now that the knobs are here I have more incentive to get this stuff done!

That's all the news I've got today. Well, other than the kids and I just had a serious discussion about poor attitudes, not minding, and how I'm not their maid. Won't be the last time that discussion hits the fan. Gee, I can't wait 'til the teenage years. (go back and read that sentence again, and just imagine it dripping heavily with sarcasm.)

I'd go have an alcoholic beverage thanks to my children, but I don't think that would go over well when I have to go to church choir practice tonight, do you?

Spelling Bee

I had grand intentions of getting so much done today, I really did. But it just wasn't meant to be. I bet that I had six different things on the menu today. Oh well.

What I did do was to attend the Second Grade Spelling Bee at the Eldest's school. Guess who came in 2nd place in the entire second grade?

The bad thing is, his final word was juvenile. Well, that wasn't so bad really. I know adults that can't spell that word. What was bad was that he spelled his word correctly and the judges didn't hear it. To top it off, the word that the winner got: mountain. I'm sorry, but these two words are not even in the same league, in my opinion. However, the Eldest doesn't know it yet, but this is a blessing in disguise.

I figure this is an excellent lesson for him on how the world isn't fair and how not to get all caught up in it, so that's what we discussed on the way home. Funny thing is, I remember having a very similar incident happen to me in elementary school and we discussed that as well.

I love it when life delivers these lessons into my hands so that I can teach them more effectively. This is something that every child needs to learn early: that not everyone gets to win all the time and the quicker they learn this, the better. I hate the way people try and make things "fair" for the young kids where "everybody is a winner". The philosophy may look good on paper, but in reality I think today's society is setting up it's children to to hate themselves later in life when they do fail to achieve something. Sooner or later it will happen as an adult and they won't have those early experiences at losing to fall back on.

It's so tough to see that lesson driven home though. A bunch of these kids left the stage in tears. The tension was so thick up there and it was really hard to watch. It really wasn't a big deal, they won't be competing with anyone else. It's just preparation for the next couple of years of spelling bees. But, oh boy, were they nervous.

Yes, I want my children to succeed, but I want them to lose occasionally too, just to prepare them for life's little surprises later on in their adult lives. There's a reason the phrase "tough love" was coined. If more people indulged in a little tough love with their kids and let them lose sometimes, maybe some of those overachiever kids that make the news when they failed at something might have been able to adjust better.

EDITED: To correct my own spelling. How ironic is that? I misspelled overachiever. Wouldn't you just know it?

Ongoing Projects

I apologize for flaking and missing three days of blogging. I was hip deep into either the kitchen restoration or recovering from the kitchen restoration. It's not done, far from it. There's still lots to do, but I'm only working on it now a couple of times a week. It'll take a while.

I did get some carding done - still working on my brown sweater yarn project. I've begun carding all the separate fibers together and came up with the percentages. There's 2.5 pounds of fiber, 39% is brown and black alpaca, 59% blend of Corriedale and domestic wools and 2% nylon. It's so incredibly soft. I'd show you pics of it, but it doesn't look much different from the last one I took of the fiber. There's only so many ways you can photograph brown batts of fiber.

My two other ongoing projects had some "big" stuff happen though:

1. The Eldest ended up being the third highest reader of the entire school for the year and got to go to the Scholastic Book warehouse where he was congratulated, fed and given $10 bucks to shop. You'd think he would get books, but oh no, not him. He came home with computer games. Yep, I'm officially raising a computer geek.

2. The Youngest got his first gymnastics medal! Here he is with his best friend on the podium:

Ta-Da!