Not A Pink Girl
Freddy Goes to the North Pole by Walter R. Brooks (1930)
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Freddy Goes to the North Pole by Walter R. Brooks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
All the Freddy books are wonderful. These are great books to listen to on CD when you’re traveling with the kids. When my son was 11 we listened to Freddy and the Flying Saucer Plans on a drive from DC to Cape Cod. All of us loved it! This book combines 2 things I love (animals & Santa Claus).
Tags: animals, children's books, christmas, family books, recorded books, Santa Claus, talking animals, teamwork
A Crafter’s Book of Santas: More Than 50 Festive Projects by Leslie Dierks
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A Crafter’s Book Of Santas: More Than 50 Festive Projects by Leslie Dierks
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I enjoyed this book. I found some real gems in it.
I was especially intrigued with the carved wooden Santas. I haven’t done woodcarving since I was a child & I love the finished product. The Elfin Santa features a little guy carved from a small block of wood. This guy would be so sweet tucked into a corner as a surprise for your little ones.
To me, with handcrafted Santas, it’s all about the face. If the face doesn’t have that beneficent child-man twinkly-eyed countenance, it doesn’t make me look twice. That’s a problem I had with many of the projects in this book: the face was just cheesy. It doesn’t matter how elaborate the robe is, or how many gewgaws Santa has pouring out of his sack, if the face is slapdash, it’s not a successful project.
I like the patterns in this book. They could be used for other projects if you’re an experienced crafter. This book could be worth buying for the patterns alone. The directions for the projects are detailed & relatively easy to understand.
There’s the Jingle Bell Santa Trio which I found delightful. I am fascinated by papier mache. This looks like a difficult project to me. But the face on the squinty-eyed Santa is absolutely delightful.
The Victorian Father Christmas is unique & delightful in a nostalgic & childlike way. It’s also a papier mache project.
There are some needlepoint projects in the book which are quite nice. I do almost every kind of needlework, but I don’t needlepoint.
I grow birdhouse gourds for projects & have quite a few curing in my basement, so the gourd Santas in this book really took my fancy. The Moon & Stars Santa is one I’d like to try & is fairly straightforward in its instructions. The Santa Cat Gourd is a stunner & one that I very much would like to try. Again, I would buy this book for the gourd projects alone.
I enjoyed reading the introduction because I just love Christmas & its history. I always start yearning for cool-weather holidays during the dog days of summer.
There are lots of crafts for beginners in this book. I think the finished products aren’t things I would want to store away for future generations, but they’d be fun to do with the children & grandchildren. There are crafts that use fusible web, polymer clay, cotton balls, & other things you may have in your craft basket already.
Tags: christmas, christmas crafts, handmade, Santa Claus, papier mache, woodcarving, folk art, birdhouse gourd crafts
Reader’s Digest Tricks & Treats: The Ultimate Halloween Book
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Tricks and Treats by Deborah Harding
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a useful book to have on your craftroom shelf. When you get back from your summer vacation at the seashore, browse this book while you listen to the crickets sing in the morning after you get the kids off to their first days of school. If you look around you, there are signs of autumn everywhere: spider webs on the lawn, yellow leaves falling on the sunniest & warmest of early-September days, morning glories that look (if possible) even more glorious after enjoying a little bit of coolness overnight. Crickets still scratching away as late as 10 AM are a sure sign that harvest fun must be just around the corner.
The introductions to each of the chapters in this book transported me away from the heat & humidity of summer to the cooler days of early autumn. They are a nice addition to the craft instructions & really got me in the Halloween mood.
There are quite a few of what I call “cheesy crafts” in this book, but it’s desirable anyway because of the detailed directions & easily-photocopied patterns. I like the addition of a “General Directions” section in the back. I’ve been sewing & crocheting since I was 7 years old, but this old dog really could use some new tricks, as well as a brushing-up on the old ones.
The Smiling Scarecrow at the beginning of the book is a fun craft that you can put your own unique artistry into & turn out something that the kids will look forward to unearthing from storage every September 21. I like the simple but satisfying Hanging Ghosts – the ones that use balloons & simple papier-mache -because the finished product really is adorable. You won’t feel guilty about just throwing these away after Halloween because you’ll look forward to making them again next year, so storing them doesn’t have to be a concern. I thought these would be particularly spooky if you put a string of mini-lights inside or around their circumference.
There’s a lengthy section on kids’ costumes. There are so many inexpensive Halloween costumes available at the big-box discount stores that I wouldn’t put all the time & energy into making one myself. Use your time sitting with your feet up with a cup of apple-cinnamon tea & a book of Victorian ghost stories while the kids are at school or out playing. Remember: If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. The makeup tips are useful & fun, though.
The Pumpkin Head Family is fun & I bet you find more than a couple of new ideas for a comical front-porch display. I love how the authors used the pumpkins’ stems as noses. And you don’t have to make a huge mess carving the pumpkins to give your gourd true personality.
The Fun Foods section includes lots of doable “recipes” that will delight your little partygoers. I know my grandchildren especially love to decorate cookies (& then immediately eat them, of course).
The highlight of this book, for me, was the fusible-web Scaredy Cat quilt, Halloween wall-hanging & pillows. I don’t use fusible web often, but I know it’s easy & quick. I would make the Scaredy-Cat quilt with antique reproduction fabric to make it look like it’s vintage. My mind started to race with possibilities looking at these three projects. I also like things I can hang on the wall or use as whimsical decor touches in the living room.
Check Amazon for this book from used-book sellers. I bet you can find it for not more than a couple of dollars & you’ll turn to it throughout the year. I love Halloween no matter what month of the calendar it is.
Tags: autumn, baking with children, children's crafts, crafts, fall, Halloween, harvest, needlecraft, needlework
Create A Bewitched Fall-O-Ween by Kasey Rogers
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Create a Bewitched Fall-O-Ween by Kasey Rogers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a delightful, different & FUN book! Just buy it! I loved Bewitched (I have the 1960s show theme song as my cellphone ringtone) & so enjoyed the fact that this book was co-written by the woman who played Larry Tate’s wife on the show. There are some truly different & super-fun craft projects to make your Halloween ghoulishly horrible & happy! This is the kind of craft book that, while you’re reading it the first time, you want to JUMP UP & get started on a project. This is a must-have for your craft library.
Spooky Halloween Crafts: 35 Hauntingly Easy Projects and Decorating Tips by Susan Cousineau
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Spooky Halloween Crafts by Susan Cousineau
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was a little worried when I opened this book & immediately thought, “Cheesy crafts.” But I was pleasantly surprised as I continued to read. The author has some good (& unique) tips about crafting that I found useful. I like the Black Cat Candy Cup (& a ghost & pumpkin version) made from Styrofoam balls & instant papier mache. This is a fairly easy craft that could turn out some heirloom-worthy art if you really put your own original spin on the painting & decoration. Also, the Pumpkin Pin Pal (with ghost & cat versions) are really adorable, easy & downright fun. Love the use of “baby bracelet” beads on the ghost pin spelling out BOO. The Frankenstein pizza box is a comical way to recycle that bane of every trash collector’s existence. There’s also a recipe for Cookie Monster Pizza (a big chocolate chip cookie with gummy worms) to put inside the box. I think these would be good crafts for all the kids in the family (that bid kid named Mom especially).
Tags: birthday party, children, crafts, family, found objects, Halloween, harvest
Duma Key by Stephen King (read by John Slattery of Mad Men)
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Tags: fiction, Florida, Gulf coast, horror novels, John Slattery, Mad Men, Stephen King
I want to travel! *eyes glaze over*
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Whew. It’s a tough travel world out there.
I crave travel. I want to go on a trip. I yearn to hit the road. But it’s not that simple.
I’m beginning to think that, unless you have an unlimited bank account, planning a getaway is an overwhelming & off-putting challenge. Every year I go through this. It’s about to drive me nuts!
When I was a kid, we didn’t really travel. We went to the beach (Ocean City MD) every summer for a week (for a couple of years there, 2 weeks). That was it. *yawn*
Don’t get me wrong. I loved our beach vacations. I lived for them. Ocean City was (still is, maybe more so) a tacky tourist trap with a boardwalk filled with all the sights & smells that make a little kid dizzy with the possibilities. Thrasher’s French Fries (I think they were the original “boardwalk fries”), Dolle’s caramel popcorn, Dumser’s real custard soft-serve ice cream (not like the fake weird stuff they serve at McDonald’s now), The Dough Roller pizza pies, Josh’s doughnuts (now called The Fractured Prune), Weitzel’s Crab Cakes, The Candy Kitchen’s fudge (I always found saltwater taffy to be the biggest letdown; all the flavors sounded so great & it just tasted so blah [& took my fillings out to boot]), & so many more yummy stuff.
Each dozen is made to your order! *drool*
I’m done with all the maintenance doctor appointments for me & my son (dentist, general practitioner). I’m itching to hit the road. Have you ever seen the book RoadFood? I want to drive (& eat) my way through that book.
I’m especially tempted by all the diners in New England. I adore New England. I figure it’s sort of like when you go to Europe. Everything is so close together. You can land in London, stay there a week, hop a ferry, visit the old castles & monastery ruins in Ireland, take another boat to France, buy a EuroRail pass & take the train to Paris, then Marseilles, Provence, the French Riviera… mais qui, mon vieux! Oops, got lost in thought there for a second & imagined myself wearing a jaunty beret & Paloma Mon Rouge red lipstick while walking my well-groomed poodle as I teeter down the 13th arrondissement & hum La Vie en Rose…
In other words, if you go to Europe you’re in the immediate vicinity of lots of major cities on the continent. But if you live in Arkansas, good luck if you want to go to Vegas. You have to fly or borrow some vacation days from somebody at your job.
Remember back in the olden days when you’d drive to Florida at the drop of a hat? I’ve driven to Florida “straight through” about 3 times. That means I didn’t stop. It was a 22-hour drive. That was back when my bones & muscles were relatively flexible (like, in my 20s). Now, if I drive 100 miles without stopping, I get a “hitch in my gitalong,” otherwise known as a cramp in my hip. And how about that “restless leg syndrome?” Sheesh! When did they invent that? I get this weird feeling just below my knees all the way down to my toes. It’s not pain, but it’s this feeling like, if I don’t walk around & get the blood circulating in my legs pretty soon, my feet are gonna fall off.
The funniest part is when I go to get out of the car after driving for a hundred or so miles. I have to get out very. Slowly. And carefully. Then stand for a minute, just stand there, before I take a step. And it’s not like I’m 80 or something.
The tough thing is that I find it so difficult to book airline tickets. Don’t get me wrong, I love to fly. I mean, think about it. It takes about 2 hours to get from DC to Fort Myers Florida by plane. If I drive it takes 22 hours. Really easy choice there, right? But when’s the last time you booked airline tickets online? I am serious when I tell you I break out in a sweat every time I try to buy a seat on a plane. I always end up closing the page before I enter my credit card number & click SUBMIT.
It seems easy, right? You go to Expedia or Travelocity & put in your travel dates. First, I don’t like the markup you have to pay to use these sites. It’s just so arbitrary, sort of like the “service charge” you have to pay when you buy concert tickets through TicketMaster (the name says it all) or LiveNation. I mean it can’t cost $9 a ticket to drive to the box office at the venue & buy your tickets, even factoring in the age-old “Time is money” conundrum, carbon footprint, gas, wear & tear on your vehicle, etc. If you’re buying 4 tickets, that $36 extra you have to spend just to print the tickets out on your home printer! Thank you, dear Master, for giving me the opportunity to line your pockets with gold pieces!
Okay, so Expedia & Travelocity are out. So just pop over to one of the many airline websites, like JetBlue. I love JetBlue. I’ve flown it to Vegas. That is definitely a party flight. Everybody’s in a good mood, convinced their going to line their pockets with the MegaBucks jackpot at Caesar’s Palace. Or get lucky in another way.
All the flight attendants are perky & chirpy & passing out the Famous Amos cookie packets & bottled water like there’s no tomorrow. The flight back is a different story. I took the red-eye back. Huh-boy. Even the flight attendants are like flaccid kiddie party balloons. Vegas giveth… & Vegas taketh away.
But it was cheap, something like $238 round trip (that includes all the hundreds of extra charges, like taxes, Dick Cheney-Halliburton fuel surcharge, 9/11 security fee, TSA teach-the-security-officers-how-to-look-really-threatening class fee, etc.). And my friend Mary has a timeshare at Tahiti Villages (you know, the one that’s hawked by Alan Thicke as he stands knee-deep in one of the swimming pools on the property). The desert is beautiful in November (we went 2 weeks before Thanksgiving) & I hadn’t been there since 1995.
So, back to the present & my itch to go on vacation. I think I’m going to end up driving to Florida. Yes, I know I said I’d never do it again. The last time I drove to Florida was July 2005. I had a Scarlett O’Hara moment where I shook my fist at the I-95 rest stop sign & shouted, “As God is my witness, I’ll never make this drive again!”
But we did have an unforgettable time. I’ll tell you about it in another post.
