Saturday, January 31, 2009

the church as entertainment

Is anyone else worried about the trend of "the church as entertainment"? Surprise, surprise. It isn't a trend -- it's been around for a while now, but has exploded amongst the general evangelical movement. This is the first of a series of five videos...watch all of them. The video will give you the option at the end to continue to the next video.

Video produced by The White Horse Inn -- see link to the right to visit their site.

Monday, January 26, 2009

star wars trilogy abridged to 2 1/2 minutes

This is so funny...this girl has never seen Star Wars and thinks she can explain the Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi in 2 1/2 minutes.



Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

consumer products safety improvement act -- AACKK!

One of my favorite toy manufacturers, Selecta will no longer be selling in the US due to the high cost of doing business under the upcoming changes to the CPSIA (Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act). It's a honkin' big shame, too.

http://www.playthings.com/article/CA6620437.html

http://www.unplugyourkids.com/2008/12/09/auf-wiedersehen-selecta/#comment-5261

We're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I'll post pictures of the Selecta toys we have soon.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

kindergarten and two wheelin'

Monumental few days in this Almost Mexico, AZ household. We received our first notice from Ingrid's school for kindergarten registration. Would you lend me your wisdom parents? I have some questions about kindergarten:

1. To those of you with experience in sending children to kindergarten outside of the home, what hours and days of the week does/did your child attend? In other words, what is the most common format for kindergarten? Monday/Wednesday/Friday 9 - noon, Monday through Friday AM or PM, etc....

2. For those of you who home school/homeschooled kindergarten, what home school kindergarten curriculum did you use? A mishmash? Something out of a box? Has anyone utilized a State-provided, on-line supported curriculum for kindergarten?

The cake pictured above and to the right is in celebration of Ingrid getting rid of her bicycle training wheels! You go girl!

And not to be outdone by big sister, Ilsa potty trained this week! Literally overnight. I was practically in tears the day before because I was so tired of pullups and she had shown no interest whatsoever in doing the deed. The next day, she wanted underwear and nothing to do with pullups.







Sunday, January 18, 2009

attn: fellow almost mexicans

This time of year in Almost Mexico, people are trying to offload their citrus before it spoils. Last week, Chad brought home a plastic grocery bag filled with homegrown lemons from a co-worker's tree; I just used my handy-dandy food processor juicer attachment to juice 2 quarts of juice, then I made up a batch of the best lemonade I've ever had:
  1. Make a simple syrup: in a small saucepan over medium heat, dissolve 3/4 to 1 cup of white sugar in 1 cup of water. It doesn't need to boil, just dissolve.
  2. In a pitcher, add the simple syrup to 1 cup of lemon juice.
  3. Add in 3 - 4 cups of cold water and stir.
  4. Refrigerate until thoroughly chilled, 45 minutes at least.

You won't ever have a better glass of lemonade! Oh also, I made it with 1 cup of sugar and it was waaaaay too sweet for our taste, so we added in more lemon juice and water to tone it down. But if you like sweeeeet, use 1 cup of sugar.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

i'm not imagining things!

Okay, I thought I was going crazy, or that at least that the cable company was messing with my mind. Playhouse Disney has disappeared. Well, yes, I'm partially right. Apparently the powers that be over at the Big Ears have downsized the Playhouse Disney lineup. For those of you beyond preschool parenting years, Playhouse Disney is simply the block of programming aimed at preschoolers from early morning until about noon on The Disney Channel. It was commercial free (save a few surprisingly subtle "sponsored by" spots) and offered sweet, innocent, fun and age-appropriate shows for the little ones.

While there are a few of the programs that have been on PD still showing, the PD branding, lack of commercials and preschooler friendly bump and segue spots have disappeared. Between shows the airtime is NOW packed with ads for Hannah Montana, Zack and Cody, High School Musical and all things Tweener. Blah.

As my loyal readers know, we aren't a huge kids TV household, but I do allow them to watch a little bit in the morning and afternoons during "strategic" times for Mommy -- my coffee time and dinner prep time. I don't cloister my girls, but I do want to control, as much as I can, the flow of what commercial crud is forced into their line of sight. We are in the process of de-commercializing their wardrobe (sorry girls, no more Princess clothing...books or movies only), trying to de-"plastic" their toys and basically turn them into little Luddites (just kidding). Seriously, I don't see any reasonable need for them to even know who in the world Hannah Montana is...she would not contribute anything positive to their childhoods.

I'm hoping that the reason for this programming change is a preschool-dedicated channel similar to Noggin and Sprout in the offing, considering the switch to Digital is coming in a few weeks.

Tell me what you think.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

modern granny square afghan


It's done! It looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. Of course, being a Stephanie project, there were plenty of "uh ohs" and "oopses" (is that a correct way to spell the plural of oops?). At the last minute, I decided against adding the olive green wide border. I think it would take away from the simplicity of the design.






Saturday, January 3, 2009

funny stuff

"I think my wife's a Calvinist"

10 things for which I am thankful

In no particular order:

1. Ingrid's budding interest in "higher things" -- allegory, literature and anything without a princess.
2. Scrambled eggs with cheddar and turkey pepperoni
3. half.com
4. Women's Bible study starts up again on Tuesday
5. My new purple (yes PURPLE! amazing -- Steph is wearing a non-neutral color!) Haiku purse
6. Puzzles
7. "All" detergent with "Stainlifters"
8. The Christmas decorations are down and snugly packed away for another year
9. Ilsa loves her new bike
10. Chad loves me, I love him, and we are committed to each other. Period.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

modern granny square throw

Here is my current crochet project: a modern granny square blanket...I kind of went nutso with the hip colors to match our living room. Of course, being me, I goofed in the piecing. It wouldn't be a Stephanie project without some goof up drama -- the 10 patches on the right are really supposed to be 12 patches, and the big black block bottom left is not supposed to be so big...so I'm winging it a little bit. That's why there is a row to the left of two of each color -- I'm actually just going to sew those into a little table runnery thing for the sideboard.

The basic layout is from the "Stitch 'n B****" crochet book; recognize what it is? It's a TV test pattern. Weird, huh? But I was drawn in by the "Mondrianesque" quality of the pattern. In fact, I didn't even recognize what it was until after I had purchased all of the yarn.


I probably have about 5 hours of work to go on it. Not a ton. I'm thinking of edging the whole thing with a thick olive border -- perhaps a double or triple crochet stitch...maybe even bigger.

christmas tree ocd

Every time I take down the Christmas tree and decorations, I pack everything away in such a way that the ornaments would be safe should we move...who knows when the PCS orders will arrive, huh? So this year I went above and beyond.

I took an inventory of our ornaments (we have some really nice ones that parents have given us...Radko's, etc.) that I plan to enter onto a spreadsheet in Excel. Then I labeled every single little box that each little individual ornament goes into so that every ornament has its own little home. All of the breakables are in one big old Rubbermaid bin, and all of the others are in another big old Rubbermaid bin...and those are all individually wrapped in ziplock bags and labeled with a Sharpie.

We have a lot of ornaments. So far, we have more snowmen than anything. Teddy bears are a close second. 85% are probably that shiny blown glass kind. We have about 10 "Our First Christmas" ornaments, and about 10 "Baby's First Christmas" ones. The most beautiful ornament has to be the Radko 4 Santas from 2005 when we became a family of 4. Our strangest ornament has to be the little wooden salmon. There's a tie for most sentimental: Chad's little sparkly smily faces that he made in gradeschool, and my little soldiers and drums.

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