Winter for Dummies...

Winter conditions do not maintain a constant temperature.  Occassionally, in the middle of a thaw, the temperature will drop suddenly.  This causes all the puddles of melted snow to freeze.  Likewise, all run-off from a house gutter will freeze.

Use extreme caution when leaving the safety of home to get the mail.  If you have a downspout right next to your mailbox, you likely will have a large, watery-looking patch of ice directly beneath your mailbox.

Warning: should you succumb to the ice, do NOT attempt to stay upright by grabbing onto your mailbox!  You will only injure your hand and look like an idiot.

Christmas Card solution

How do YOU display your Christmas cards? The Slapdashery saw this method in a Pottery Barn catalogue, and decided to be a copy cat. She isn't sure how she will keep the dashers from attempting to reenact Tarzan on them, but they are pretty for now.


PS: Don't you just love my surruptitiously flashy wall?

STOWAWAYS

I don't know about your house, but at mine, we occasionally find stowaways.

What's a stowaway?



Well, a stowaway is when you go to make the guest bed, peel back the covers and find a stuffed animal lovingly laid to rest. Or, when you open up your lunchbox at work, and find a truck parked perfectly so it can pull right out and go on its way.

One of our most recent and pervasive stowaways is this wall rock that you see pictured above.

Yes, a rock.

Some small child found this rock and brought it in doors. Another small child pilfered a piece of sticky-tack, affixed it to the back of the rock, and stuck it to the wall in our entryway. Walking down the stairs, a parent spied the new addition to the wall, inspected it, determined it to be what it was, and removed it.

It appeared again the next day.

And the day after that.

And the day after that.

This stowaway is now a semi-permanent resident of our entryway wall.

I heard our daughter laughingly pointing it out to her friend a few days ago, and knew myself to be what I was:
A bamboozled, befuddled and bedraggled parent

Great Ideas...

Sometimes great ideas come when one is thinking about two entirely separate things.  Here's what was on my brain:

-Tiny Hands
-Cute way to efficiently organize our entryway for winter (hooks?)
-Design principle: Repetition.  Hanging many hooks of the same kind in a row can be sculpural.

So, I was doing my usual MO and searching the web (ohdeeoh, Martha Stewart, Anthropologie, funky toys, Umbra, etc), but thinking about how funny tiny hands are, and... voila!

What about hanging many hand backscratchers on the wall next to the door as coat hooks?

Now: how do I get hand backscratchers, and how shall I affix them to the (brick) wall?

favorite blog post

Confession: I don't read blogs, I read books that are occasionally based on blogs.  When I want ideas for a creative project, homeschool activities or the weather forecast, I search the web.  When I want to read something entertaining, I turn to books.

I picked up a book a long time ago that made me laugh outloud called Why Girls Are Weird by Pamela Ribon.  Further research revealed that the book was based on this woman's blog.  Now, most of you (who are probably blog readers; since you're reading my blog, I guess you figured out that whole dashboard thing--can you teach me?) are probably like,

"Duh!  Pamela Ribon is a pioneer in the blogosphere." 

And I'm like, "Pamela Ribon has published two books.  She's a guppie in the book world."

Anyway, one of my favorite pieces of written comedy was contained in that book (the book itself was kinda whiny when not really, really funny, but that's kind of discriptive of chicklit anyway), and I'd like to share it with all of you:

http://www.pamie.com/February99/01February99.shtml

Scroll down to the picture and start reading.  The writing is worldly, but not *too* profane.

I'm now interested in Julie and Julia by Julie Powell.  A book based on a blog that now has a movie out on DVD. 

I'm way behind the times.

Advent Buckets

We've been staying busy at the SlapDashery--busy with guests, and projects!
We got the Garnet Hill catalogue, and really, really loved their Buckets of Joy, but not the $68 price tag.

So, one trip to Hancock Fabrics, a stellar bucket find (3 for $1) at Dollar Tree and some funky Sharpie numbers later, voila!

Advent Buckets!

I wracked my brain for some clever yuletide items to put in the buckets that would point our minds to Christ, but ran out of brain power and time. Instead I filled each bucket with M&Ms--mint because I'm addicted, and peanut for variety--and we open each bucket as we read Luke 2:1-21.

Since we leave for Grandma's on the 17th, our Advent Buckets only go up to 17, serving as a real calendar, too. Just another plus of doing it myself--even if it is in a slapdashy way.