Farewell Blue Car

Today we bid farewell to our Blue Car.  It used to be known as MY car, but after we bought the Red Car both cars started getting called MY car and Travis felt left out.  So we renamed them Red and Blue cars to keep it all fair and square.

I bought this car nearly 10 years ago back in my working days.  I traded in the first vehicle I bought totally on my own (an S-10 pickup) for my 2nd new car, a 'sporty' car.  I bought the  truck when I lived up in the mountains, it made a lot of sense, and established as a city girl I wanted a zippy city car.  Boy, was it fun.  I'll miss it.

It sold fast, much faster than we expected, and today we find ourselves a one car family again.  Travis and I did a little car shopping today and much to FFM's chagrin came home empty handed.  Since Travis can bike or bus to work we don't feel huge pressure to buy a car right away, but as soon as we figure out a few logisitics (which one fits best in our garage and do we want figure out the wiring to plug one in?) we'll be on our way to new car ownership again.

bye bye Blue!

Cool Book Lists for Kids

I love books.  Our whole family loves books. We are certifiable bibliophiles.  One of my most favorite things about being a parent is sharing books with my child.  Now that he's reading on his own it's even more exciting, we read together, he reads to me, and now I catch him curled up in random places with a book of his own.  The back seat of our car is littered with paperback early readers and when he's not listening to a book on his headphones F reads a book to me or any other passenger in the car.

This is a habit I want to feed.  I have this longstanding underlying fear of running out of books.  If you are a reader you understand this.  You have to have a good backlog or you just don't feel right.  Now this stretches to my child and I want to make sure he's got plenty of books, too.  We're avid library patrons and many of the librarians know us both by name, even more by sight.  Sometimes, however, I get in a slump and can't think of any good books.  Right now we're in the space between picture books and chapter books and I'm navigating the waters of "readers" (early reader, middle reader, advanced reader etc) and there are so, so many of these books and a lot of them are just awful.

I found a few lists that have been inspiring.  They are all over the place, shoot the library is a great place to find booklists, but here are a few of my current favorites.  Please shout out your own favorites, I'd love to hear what you've found, too.

PBS Parents Bookfinder
A great search engine that allows you to type in age, theme, reader level, and keywords.

PBS Parents Best Books for Boys
OK, so you don't HAVE to be a boy to read these books but I've found that like clothes there are far more books aimed towards girls than boys once you hit a certain age.  This list breaks it down by reading level making searching for that novel for your nephew or picture book for you new grandson a piece 'o cake.

67 Books Every Geek Should Read to Their Kids Before Age 10
This list is so much fun. It was written by a Dad and I found it when F started choosing chapter books in lieu of pictures books at bedtime every night. Chapter books at bedtime created an interesting shift in our routine. Travis and I went from rushing through bedtime stories and secretly hoping the other would get picked, to hoping we'd get picked to do bedtime and secretly reading the chapters we'd missed when the other got to do the nightly read.  I admit I've had to pay some library fine so I could finish reading a book that Travis and F got to read.

Teacher's First 100 Best Books
Trying to remember those classic books you loved as a child? Nothing groundbreaking here, when you're in the mood for the oldies but goodies try this list.  The link above goes to the 1999 list which is neatly organized by age, if you are interested in the updated list from 2007 click HERE but be prepared to sift through as it's not organized into any categories.

Common Sense Media
I discovered Common Sense Media when F started school and got his own computer. I wanted to make sure he wasn't stumbling into unsafe or inappropriate places online and stumbled upon their website when doing research.  Their forte is age appropriateness of media - so if you're wondering how soon before you can crack out Harry Potter without scaring the pants off your kiddo, they'll give you some suggestions.

Oprah's Book List for Kids
I'm going to lay this out there, I'm not always a fan of Oprah's book choices.  But she makes them and sometimes they are very good books.  Mainstream with a hint of cultural awareness, this list is decent and includes our favorite early reader characters, Elephant and Piggie by Mo Willems.  It's a flash slideshow, so bring your patience.

Book Awards
Don't forget kids books win awards too!
Caldecott - Awarded to the artist of picture books
Geisel - Distinguished books for beginning readers
Children's Notable Books - Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) chooses the best of the best kid books

QOTD

"Emma and I are moving upstairs to play because downstairs isn't a good enough neighborhood."

I have NO idea where THAT came from.

Halloween Project '12

I am resigning myself to the fact that Halloween costumes will never be simple as I anticipate they will be.

November 1, 2011- "Mom, I want to be a mummy next year for Halloween!"  Cool. A piece of cake.  FFM was consistent and told me for months (I guess some kids are planners and think about costumes year round) that he wanted to be a mummy.  End of summer arrives.  Suddenly the whole costume idea changes.  No more mummy, it's Jake the Pirate.  Now, if I have to manufacture any part of a costume I need a looooooooooooong lead time.  I am not a zippy seamstress. I need like weeks.  Or months.  Just in case it takes a try or two.  Or three.

Jake is a licensed Disney character.  Easy costume methinks! Simply order one from Disney and be done!  Even better, this summer a Disney store opened in our nearby mall.  Super.  I rang them up and asked 1) if they would be recieveing Jake costumes and 2) When they would arrive and 3)What sizes they would get.

Yes, they were in, and biggest was 5T.

Uh oh.  FFM hasn't been a 5T for a while. Now, it's a costume, so maybe I could squeeze him into it and not worry about it being too short if it got me out of constructing one from scratch.  Short OK.  Not going all the way around, whole 'nother ball of wax. grrrrrrrr

So the premade costume idea didn't pan out so I came home and googled and checked Pinterest for ideas.  I am not alone.  The vast knowledge of the internet yielded instructions for a homemade costume.  I'm cobbling together several patterns, mainly with the help of this one from Between the Toys and another from Lu Bird Baby.

My mission, now that I have chosen to accept it, is to turn this:

into this:

Note: Mr. Detail pointed out that the shiny gray fabric we picked is NOT the right color but it passed his approval anyway.

Buddies

Kindergarteners get to do all kinds of cool things.  One of FFM's favorites are every-other-Friday buddy days.  Each Kindergarten child is paired up with a third grader and on alternating Fridays they get together for an activity.  The first week they did get to know you sheets and FFM finally got to bring his home.

A sidenote - some third graders pick their buddies, FFM's buddy picked him because they share the same (currently unusual) name.  They get a kick out of calling each other and my F gets all giggly when he tells me about his buddy F.

The things you learn!  I had no idea his favorite sport was baseball.  Of course when he brought this home he told me now his favorite sport was football because the Broncos are currently playing.  I suspect he was thinking from a spectating angle more than participation.  Zoomies is really the Nick show Team Umizoomi which has been a favorite for a long time.  Good on Buddy F for nearly spelling Qantas right.

On the 3rd grader side I had to Google Kennywood to learn it's an amusement park in Pennsylvania and that Ridiculousness (way to spell kiddo!) is a show on MTV that features video clips of people doing ridiculous things.

Both boys enjoy music, although it didn't make it anywhere on our side of the list. FFM loves that his 3rd grader is a drummer since he's an avid pianist/singer and hoping to play guitar soon.  Perhaps they'll strike up a band before we know it.  Look for the Funkadelic F's playing a show near you!

Pinterest Project

I enjoy Pinterest.  It clicks with my style of visual organization and I like stashing project ideas for later.  Like most people I have way more ideas than I have time to follow through on but I do manage to do a few of my Pinterest projects and this latest is one of my favorites.

Our 30 year old house came equipped with 30 year old shiny brass hardware.  All of the light fixtures, towel bars, and even the floor registers have been updated, but the door hardware screams early 1980s.  Hello Pinterest idea.  I stumbled across this idea and there are about a million websites that give you specific instructions but I'll tell you what I did to change shiny brass to a more updated look.

 First I took all the hardware off, including the latch and strike plates.  Hinges will come later, I only had so much stamina.  I cleaned them all with TSP so that the paint would stick really well.  Travis picked up some primer and spray paint for me on one of his regular Home Depot trips.  Even though the paint said it had primer our past experience tells us things last longer and have a smoother finish with a real coat of primer under them.

Then I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed.  I should have worn a mask.  Some pieces needed to be flipped for even coverage and to make sure all visible parts were covered.  The tp rolls helped me get the undersides of the knobs.  24 hours after the last coat we put it all back up.

The color paint we used was Rustoleum oil rubbed bronze.  I ended up using just more than 1 can for 2+ coats on all the interior hardware in a 2 story house.  It's great!  For less than $20 and an easy few hours of work (more in waiting to dry time - I waited at least 1 hour between each coat) we have all new hardware.

What's next?  Maybe this!

glitterize your shoes!