Guess what?

6lb 14oz, 191/4 inches of perfectly pink perfection. Everybody healthy.  Some people exhausted. Labour was four or five hours.  The HG's new nickname should be Speedracer.

 

 

Hypocrosy

The Bureau of the Public Debt may accept gifts donated to the United States Government to reduce debt held by the public.

Last year, citizens donated 3,277,369.23 to this cause.

With all those millionaires claiming they wished more of their money was going to the government, wouldn't you think there'd be more donated?

If they serious about that, of course. But they don't want more of THEIR money going to the government, or they wouldn't use tax shelters and breaks and avoid donating to the government. What they mean is that YOU and I should be taxed more, and all those other rich cats, not themselves.

Breastfeeding Nurse-In

Breastfeeding moms had a nurse-in yesterday in response to a rude and ill informed couple of employees at Target who demanded that a well-covered nursing mother not breastfeed her baby in the store- an illegal demand in Texas, where it happened, and over half the states.

Anytime a discussion of something like this comes up in certain circles, there are always a few elements who insist nursing moms should not 'flaunt it.'  Never mind that the displays of underwear and lingerie in those same stores DO 'flaunt' far more than most nursing mothers ever display.

And, actually, I do think Christian women do have a responsibility to be modest within reason to help their brothers and not be a stumbling block. I also feel that Christian men have an even stronger obligation to be MEN who learn and practice self control, taking *every* thought captive for Christ (that's scripture) so as not to be stumbling blocks themselves. I do not think demanding that women only nurse their babies by hiding away in a back room while they feed their children as God designed is a reasonable demand, and it is itself "a stumbling block."


It's also unbiblical thinking.


Isaiah 40:11 says that our Good Shepherd gathers the little ones into his arms and tenderly leads the nursing mothers.


Is. 49:15 tells us God is more tender and compassionate to His children then even a mother with a breastfeeding baby.
HE is not embarrassed by the thought of a breastfeeding baby. He uses that breastfeeding baby as a metaphor for his own tender compassion,

1 Thessalonians 2:7 has Paul the bachelor without shame comparing himself and his companions to breastfeeding mothers, saying he was as tender with the new converts as a mother is to her nursing baby. How did he know how tenderly a mother behaves with a breastfed baby if the 1st century Christians hid away in back corners of dark rooms to nurse their babies as though it were something shameful?

Joel 2:16 shows us God commanding that the suckling babies be brought into the assembly. Clearly, He is not embarrassed by them, nor does he expect the rest of the congregation to be 'distracted' by them.

I submit that if we find breastfeeding awkward and embarrassing, we are not thinking as God thinks, but thinking as carnal man thinks, and we need to bring our thinking in line with God's, not the other way around

Updated to add this excellent link from Tim Challies- exchanging the natural for the unnatural.

Movies

We went and saw TinTin last week.  I really liked it. It's cute, it's true to the spirit of the books, it's fun.  Snowy has little adventures in the background that his master doesn't see. Guns are shot. People sometimes bleed. One of them dies (a good guy, as it happens). There are free swinging punches, pirates, swashbuckling, and captains. There is hard drinking (Captain Haddock, of course).

There is one startlingly inappropriate innuendo about animal husbandry that I think will go right over the heads of all children under 12 and quite a few over.  It happens so fast that those of us in the theater looked at each other and said, "Wha? Did he just? Really? Did that mean what it sounded like it?" and it was already four scenes past that single line.  I do not know what they were thinking.

TinTin is, other than that single comment, a good boy movie for those who are not pacifists, who don't mind their kids playing with guns, who don't get squeamish about fist fights and such.  There were ten of us there.  I've read one TINTIN. My son has read more than I know. Pip has read a couple.  Even the people who had never read a TinTin enjoyed the movie. They missed a couple of jokes, but there no jokes that are such insider jokes that not getting them renders the movie incomprehensible.

Sherlock Holmes was cleaner than the last one.  There's a series of awkward double entendres in a scene where Holmes and Watson are rolling around the cabin fighting while Sherlock wears a dress, and the scene where Mycroft Holmes (played by Stephen Fry) is clearly nude, and they bring the camera angle down as low as they can in order to forcibly make the point that yes, he has no clothes on, while not garnering an R rating.  There's a lot of violence.  I like violence in my movies.  I adore Stephen Fry with his clothes on. Sans pants, not so much.  I suppose I could admire his courage, because it did take courage.  Ahem.

Two of us went and saw Hugo with friends, and the HG and Strider watched it another day.  Liked it.  I saw it in 3D, which usually makes me sick, but in this case it was just lovely.  There is a bizarre scene where, in the background, a police officer is commiserating with his friend whose pregnant wife has left him.  He asks very personal questions about whether or not the child is his friend's, and how long has it been since they had relations.  I don't know why movie makers think this is appropriate or funny or whatever it is they think.  There is another scene where the same officer is trying hard to strike up a conversation with a young woman he likes.  He finds himself discussing cows and their udders. He is also making gestures suggest of a female human being's 'udder.' It's out of place, but probably over the heads of most of the children.
Otherwise, charming, and somewhat educational as well if old movies and how they were made interests you- and if it doesn't, it might by the time you finish watching.

The HG and STrider are going to see War Horse tonight.  Equuschick and I are waiting.  For one thing, it doesn't come to our theater until next week.  More importantly, we must know if the horse lives or dies before we got to his movie.  If he lives, we shall see the film. If he dies, we shall wait for DVD, and even then, the EC may well decline.  She's already had one horse die, and with the Zeus dog possibly cancerous, she's not in the mood for another animal passing, even on screen.

Have a First Generation iPod Nano?

Apple is doing a replacement program for the first generation iPod Nanos. These were sold between September 2005 and December 2006 and have a black or white plastic front and a metal back. Information about getting a replacement is here....it's a free replacement, and in the case of at least one friend, the replacement for the nano was an 8 gig iPod Touch. Not bad!

Innovative Pot Rack

We went to a friend's house for lunch recently, and this was in her kitchen. Isn't it fabulous? Her husband made it from a bit of pegboard, spraypaint, and a frame. You get the hooks at any hardware store.

Employment Tests

 [A]lthough employment tests are often biased against minorities (National Research Council, 1989), employers who use them are more likely to hire minorities than employers who lack such tests (Neckerman & Kirschenman, 1991).

From Interactions Between high Schools and Labor Markets, quoted here.
Are employment tests biased against minorities? Or are they biased against the badly educated?  Minorities and the disadvantaged are more likely to have been defrauded of an education by their public school experience than other student groups. I don't believe this is because they can't handle academics. I think schools failt to provide minorities and other disadvantaged students with skills in literacy and basic math for a number of reasons, but not one of those reasons is that those kids are too dumb to learn.
But I've blogged about this before.

I would suggest that those who use tests are more likely to hire minorities than those who don't for reasons they may only instinctively recognize.  They mainly care about the potential employee's ability to read, write, and cipher.  At some level I believe they recognize that a minority student who has successfully learned to do those things in spite of the roadblocks public school systems place in the paths of the disadvantaged is a remarkable person indeed, and an employee worth having.

FIRE, Firefly: No Power in the 'Verse Can STop Their Crusade for Free Speech

Firefly, colleges, and free speech issues discussed over at Hot Air. We are Firefly fans, and we enjoyed Serenity, too.  Yes, there are caveats, but I don't want to get into them right now.

I was really just gobsmacked by the nanny like security chief in this story. She's like the stereotypical female security officer, the kind I thought really did not exist except in books.  She acts more like a very poor first grade teacher than a reasonable adult who works with reasonable adults.

To offset this prissy security chief who would be better places as a librarian in a Catholic girl's school, we have this cool quote from Neil Gaiman (author and screen writer of Stardust, we preferred the movie)):

There are people you do not want to upset in the world. And big groups of people you don’t want to upset would obviously include the politically disenfranchised who feel they have nothing to lose. And those that feel that the time has come for revolution. Then out on the edges beyond any of those are science fiction and fantasy fans whose favorite show has been cancelled in an untimely way.

And a Twitter contest with a five hundred dollar prize. So you gotta read it all, right?

It all started from a quote a professor put outside his door, a quote from Firefly:

"You don't know me son, so let me explain this to you once. If I ever kill you, you'll be awake, facing me, and armed."

The quote occurs in the television show when one character expresses concern that the main character, Mal, will kill him in his sleep, that Mal is untrustworthy, dangerous, not to be relied on.  Mal is assuring him that he is *not* going to kill him except with cause and in a fair fight, so he can sleep on Mal's ship without fear.

The prissy campus police chief took the sign down because other people passing by in the hall might see it and be afraid that Miller, the professor, would kill them.  Seriously.  No, really.  She said that.

She also prissily warned him that if he tried anything like that again, he could face criminal charges.

he put up another poster:

She took that down, too, and now threatened his job, calling him a second offender for making violent threats on campus.That poster?  It was scary and threatening because it mentioned death.  Ooooh. 
He appealed to FIRE.

Firefly fans and two of the actors in Firefly got involved. One of them is actor Alex Baldwin (no, not that Baldwin, another one, not related to the brothers), who, along with Liberty Chick wrote a post at Big Government:

To understand the importance of this as a First Amendment issue, one needs to closely examine what happened.  A university’s Chief of Police/Parking Enforcement Officer, ignorant of the context of the quote, took it upon herself to remove not one but two posters without ever asking their context or purpose.  The professor honestly expected his First Amendment rights would not be infringed, but the school’s Chancellor cowered behind bureaucratic zero tolerance policies and did just that.
Whether or not you agree with how the professor responded, the police chief clearly overreacted to something she misinterpreted.  You can read the full exchange of those emails at FIRE.  Nothing about the poster of a fictional TV Space Captain is intended to “cause others to fear for their safety”; in fact, it is the opposite of a threat.

They also pointed out that back in the discussions of Governor Walkers bill ending collective bargaining for teachers, the campus frequently had posters up featuring the Tarantino film Kill Bill, showing the main character with a weapon and with the words "Kill (the) Bill" slashed across the top.  This campus police chief was actually quoted giving her approval to *this* mention of 'killing,' while also discussing how her own job was not exempt from the collective bargaining ban.  Hmmm.  Her prissiness only extends so far, I guess. Her sense of humour has an even smaller range.

FIRE mustered up Firefly fans, and now UW-Stout has reversed itself and backed down, making free speech safe once more in this 'Verse (University, that is).  Because a university censoring free speech is a recipe for unpleasantness (that's movie speak. I managed to fit in a couple others here somewhere).

FIRE has a youtube video out about it, and a contest as well.

Here's the youtube video:

About that contest- I entered, and my entry is here. You can vote on entries.-)  At the moment I am the third entry down, though that will probably change as there are more entries.

Christmas Pics

We opened some presents from Granny Tea on Christmas Eve at her house:

We had hugging cousins:

The Dread Pirate Grasshopper eating a piece of untraditional Christmas breakfast pizza while playing in a sunny spot in The Common Room:

At times the small fry were a bit stunned (they are all wearing Christmas PJs Jenny sewed them from a five dollar fleece blanket, and t-shirts):

The Ladybug continued her elephant walk (she is not a fan of crawling):

Zerberts abounded (my husband kissing on the Ladybug):

The FYG got dolphin sheets and dust ruffle (in a magnificent thrift shop find):

We had home-made wrapping paper:

And more home-made wrapping paper:

There was a garland of popcorn and cranberries on the tree, thanks to Pip and the FYG:

The Dread Pirate Grasshopper, little Ladybug and their parents left to visit their other Grandmama in Nebraska on Monday night.  Striderling and his family stayed over for another day, however. On Tuesday morning, we woke up to a beautiful snow.  Here's Striderling getting a peek at it:

The Cost Benefit Analysis of a College Education

The higher education bubble,and what it might mean:

We’re faced with an education bubble. Tuition and other costs associated with a college education have been outpacing inflation for decades. It’s a trend that simply cannot continue. It has continued, so far, because the demand for education has proven to be somewhat inelastic. If you want a good job (the thinking went) there really wasn’t much of a choice. You went and you paid whatever price they put in front of you.
But what’s the advantage of a good job if the salary difference between that job and a non-college-level job is lost servicing student debt? It’s a reasonable question that has become more pressing as the amount of student debt required to get an education has risen.

Updated because I forgot the link to the above quote, and you really want to look it over. The Speculist argues that the future of the University is in coffee shops, and we should be watching (and participating in) programs like this one:

At the same time several universities with world renown branding have begun offering online courses for free. MIT has been the pioneering institution in this. They were first to make practically all classes available online. Now they are beginning to offer some level of credential for completion of online courses through a new program they’re calling MITx.

Fascinating.  The Speculist article addresses the inevitable argument about how you can't get the same experience online that you can on campus. It's a great read, and I should not have missed the link.

But what I wanted to focus on is a particular experience you don't get from free online classes compared to campus courses- and that's crippling debt load.

Interesting factoid- college students often change majors in response to their shocking student debt load.

If a college education was still consistently a college education, it might still have value beyond its usefulness as a credential. But increasingly, it's just making up for high-school. In fact, a friend of mine teaches math courses at a community college, and he complains that he and and his fellow math teachers are simply teaching high school, which is not what he wanted to do with his life.
This is a lot of money to spend for high school.

You might be surprised to learn when, how, and why college education became the default- government regulations and interference had something to do with it.

The credential isn't the only reason people go to college or recommend college.  There's also the education.  But it is not a given that education happens there, education worthy of the word, which is why we continue to be both amused and very frustrated by those who insist that to avoid college is to deny oneself an education. An education, and a good one, is entirely possible outside of college walls, and a college degree is by no means evidence that one is educated.

I went to college. I mostly got good grades.  But I also got good grades in classes where I learned nothing and retained the same. Frequently people will tell me that we get out of college what we put into it, implying that if I learned nothing, it was entirely my fault. Perhaps. But what the instructor puts into it has something to do with it as well. If it all depends upon me, why do I need college?

I see problems not just in the claims people make for college, but, by contrast, what they deny as possible outside of college. What I learned outside of college was much more valuable to me. I learned that there are more ways to learn than our institutionalized philosophy has dreamed of, Horatio. You see, what those who focus on instutionalized learning seem to overlook is that learning opportunities *outside* of college are more often what you make of them, and what you can make of them cannot be short circuited by a poor instructor.

If you don't appreciate the educational opportunities and learning
possibilities the world is utterly replete with _outside_ of an institution,
then you won't take full advantage of them, and college probably won't have quite the value for you that you imagine, either.

As far as the academic value of college, the truth is that colleges have to work with the material they are sent. As public school education has been dumbed down over the last few decades, colleges have had to bend over to reach their students. Furthermore, the professors themselves were mostly educated by public schools, and thus in many areas, a college degree now might be the equivalent of a high school diploma fifty years ago.

So kids are leaving school with around 20 grand in debt, they have to get a job that allows them to eat, keep a roof over their heads, and pay down their loans (with additional interest).  The kids who did not go to college could start out their employment lives with no debt and still have more discretionary income from a job paying them half what a college grad needs just to break even.

As for that oh-so-precious education- well, I am not saying it's not there.  It really can be.  But we need to define our terms and do some important cost/benefit analysis.

In a silly online argument I permitted myself to get involved in, a college girl took the line that there is always something valuable to be learned from college, every college class, no matter what. This might be true, but what if what you learned is that the course wasn't worth the price? That's a high cost to that bit of information. Her example was, and I am not making this up, a college course she found otherwise useless, except she learned- wait for it.....

a new word.

As I recall, it wasn't even that impressive as a new word, and whatever word it was may rate as the most expensive vocabulary lesson in the history of mankind. A single textbook for that class probably cost as much as the entire Oxford English Dictionary. Class credits generally run a couple hundred dollars per credit, and a typical class is three credits- so, conservatively, somebody (probably you and I, as the taxpayers providing her college grants) paid at least three hundred dollars for her to learn a new word, when we could have just given her a dictionary and told her to have at it.

Dude Robbed the Wrong Store. Oh, Yeah.

My husband and son just enjoyed watching this:



Actually, I enjoyed it, too. Especially the bit where he makes the would-be-thief clean up his own mess.

Green Smoothy

Today some of us just felt a bit blaaaah from the unhealthy eating- and we haven't even been that gluttonous. It's not been over-eating as much as it's just been no fresh fruits or vegetables to speak of this week, and an over-reliance on white bread and potatoes to fill out meals (ugh).

So I raided the fridge and freezer and came up with:
10 ounces of frozen rhubarb
2 cups of frozen strawberries
about 10 ounces of frozen pineapple
 a banana
about a loose cup of torn parsley
about two cups of torn romaine lettuce (our fresh greens supply is pathetic)
orange juice, maybe a cup, maybe less
water, about 1 cup of water, maybe a cup and a half

I defrosted the frozen fruit just enough to break it apart.  I put about half of all the ingredients in the blender (except for the banana- that went in the second batch), and liquified. 

Verdict:
The parsley taste was strong, but it made me feel like I was drinking something healthy. =)

Pip, the HG, the Cherub and I drank ours without complaint, although Pip prefers the spinach and strawberry version.  The FYB drank his without too much complaint. The FYG had a coffee cup full and complained without ceasing until it was done.

Studying Economics Makes You Greedy

Or it makes you less likely to donate to causes favored by the left, depending on how you look at it.

Here's a hilarious send up.

This just in: The study of physics makes people less compassionate. Data show that when cornered at a party by the inventor of a perpetual motion machine, physics majors are particularly unlikely to offer positive encouragement.
Also, the study of history leads to closed-mindedness. After taking an American history course, students become considerably less open to the idea that Millard Fillmore might have been Abraham Lincoln’s vice president.

If that seems over the top, consider that the test of greediness was whether or not one was likely to donate one's own money to WashingtonPIRG or ATN, both leftwing (far left) activist groups.  I consider PIRG to be a thuggish, dishonest organization with the primary purpose of enriching the lawyer/lobbyists who work for them and arrogantly controlling the rest of us (see my CPSIA posts, click on the CPSIA tag on this post or search the blog for PIRG). I didn't know what ATN is.  Here's a description (click through to read more excellent commentary on the study):

a lobby group pressuring government for "sensible tuition rates, quality financial aid, and adequate funding of colleges...".

I know I should not be shocked, but I am stunned by the incredibly blind bias demonstrated by the author. Not only is it ridiculous to consider either of these groups charities in the traditional understanding of the word, but his definition of selfishness is the opposite of mine. It's actually even worse than I thought.  Here's his further account of why refusing to donate to these two organizations is obviously selfish:

ATN is arguably a pure public good within the student body because the aim is to distribute resources to students from outside groups. Our results here echo Marwell and Ames (1981): economics students are more likely to free-ride. It is not so clear that WashPIRG provides a similar public good because the organization's agenda extends beyond the interests of the student body. Indeed, it is possible in this case – as in, say, a requested donation for an organization dedicated to replacing competitive markets with economy-wide price controls – that economics training would reduce donation rates not because students become more selfish but because they become more educated. Regardless of the cause, however, it is clear that economics training changes the giving behavior of non-majors.

Emphasis mine. Wealth redistribution via government programs is not generosity. It's selfish (and Marxist, but I repeat myself).  Note that his explanation of why refusing to donate to PIRG perhaps might not be selfish after all, because  PIRG's agenda is outside the "interests of the student body," whereas it's inherently generous to donate to an organization that would directly benefit the student body. 

What?

So we have this blind political bias demonstrated by choosing thugs like PIRG and a politically left lobbyist group interested in wealth redistribution with a limited scope like ATN as appropriate organizations to determine 'selfishness.' In addition, it's a huge problem that he defines compassion and generosity so selfishly.  In my world, it's compassionate and generous to donate altruistically to private causes and people who do not give me back a 'cut' or benefit me personally and directly if they are successful. It's giving without expecting something in return.   Donating to organizations that will give you a cut if they are successful is self-interest- not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not proof of your generosity, either.

As a side note, some have also questioned the statistics used in the paper, an issue totally outside my ability to critique. However, the authors point to the fact that the paper was peer reviewed as proof that we can trust the statistics. As we learned from Climate-Gate, peer review does not mean the statistics were checked (or the infamous Hockey-stick would never have passed muster), and it's odd that the peer review process doesn't seem to have resulted in anybody noticing that neither the definition of unselfish or questioning his use of donations to two politically left lobbyist groups as an adequate test of unselfishness.

Here are some better tests of selfishness or greed to my mind:
Do you expect other people to pay for your pet programs via taxation? That's not compassion, that's selfishness.
When is the last time you gave something of your own to another human being, person to person, because you saw a need?
How often do you have other people into your home? Particularly people who society might not view as your 'peers,' or who are generally regarded as less fortunate? For instance, those on food stamps or welfare, single parents, somebody livng in a subsidized apartment or a homeless shelter, somebody who lives in a trailer park (I don't consider this a strong marker of anything, really, but in general society, particularly the left, does view trailer park living as something which rightly marks one as a target for opprobrium)
What sort of volunteer work have you done? Soup kitchen? Crisis pregnancy center? Shelter for battered wives? Foster care? Nursing home? Animal rescue? Red Cross? School reading programs? Story hour at the library? Free babysitting for a single parent? Rides to a job interview?
What have you done personally from your own resources to contribute toward food, gas, shelter, clothing, health care,employability, or education of somebody less fortunate than you?

Winter Wonderland from my Window

Yesterday we had our Christmas with all the Progeny still at home plus the married kids and grandbabies here. It was unseasonably warm for Christmas here- in fact, the grass is still green in many parts of the county. Or was.

Today, I woke up, rolled over- and here's what I saw out my window:

This last is taken without the flash as I was trying to catch the large snow flakes which are still coming down, as though with a sifter. 

Right now young Master Striderling is sitting in bed with me while his mommy catches up on some sleep, and his aunty Jenny makes that delectable apricot coffee cake.

He is loving watching the snow falling outside.  I am loving watching him and thinking about hwo different this Christmas is than last year's.

Dusty China

This cat teapot is divided in the middle. I'm told it was so you could put the tea on one side and cream on the other.  Isn't it interesting?

Jacob Abbott on Government Fund Raising

This is from his biography of Charles I, which I am reading with my two youngest teens. Parliament was the body authorized to grant the king funds via raising taxes, if I understand correctly, and Parliament would not give Charles I the money he wanted because he wanted it to fund a war they did not support (and also because of friction resulting from the fact that the Queen was Catholic which is part of a longer story).

So the King tried to come up funds using various other methods. This was one of them:

Another plan which was resorted to was the granting of what was called
monopolies: that is, the government would select some important and
necessary articles in general use, and give the exclusive right of
manufacturing them to certain persons, on their paying a part of the
profits to the government. Soap was one of the articles thus chosen.
The exclusive right to manufacture it was given to a company, on their
paying for it. So with leather, salt, and various other things. These
persons, when they once possessed the exclusive right to manufacture
an article which the people must use, would abuse their power by
deteriorating the article, or charging enormous prices. Nothing
prevented their doing this, as they had no competition. The effect
was, that the people were injured much more than the government was
benefited. The plan of granting such monopolies by governments is now
universally odious.

Jacob Abbott in Charles I

It may be universally odious, and the details vary, but the practice of picking winners and losers in the market is pretty much how our government functions.

Lobbyists pay part of their profits to the government in advance, seeking the government's favors, both financial and regulatory, the point being to hobble the competition as much as possible, except for when the point is to annihilate the competition.

Sunday Hymn Post

Play this Sunday Hymn Post

When Jesus was born in the manger

The shepherds came thither to see,

For the angels proclaimed that a Savior was born

To save a poor sinner like me.

To save a poor sinner,

To save a poor sinner,

To save a poor sinner like me.

For the angels proclaimed that a Savior was born

To save a poor sinner like me.

He was wounded for my transgressions,

Acquainted with sorrow was He;

In the garden He prayed, and sweat great drops of blood,

To save a poor sinner like me.

To save a poor sinner,

To save a poor sinner,

To save a poor sinner like me.

In the garden He prayed, and sweat great drops of blood,

To save a poor sinner like me.

He was brought to Pilate for judgment,

He was sentenced to hang on a tree.

It is finished! He cried, when He suffered and died

To save a poor sinner like me.

To save a poor sinner,

To save a poor sinner,

To save a poor sinner like me.

“It is finished!” He cried, when He suffered and died

To save a poor sinner like me.

But death and the grave could not hold Him,

He burst them asunder for thee.

On the third day He rose, in spite of His foes,

To save a poor sinner like me.

To save a poor sinner,

To save a poor sinner,

To save a poor sinner like me.

On the third day He rose, in spite of His foes,

To save a poor sinner like me.

I’m fighting my passage to Heaven,

O’er death I shall conqueror be.

Then to glory I’ll fly, and shout through the sky:

He saved a poor sinner like me.

To save a poor sinner,

To save a poor sinner,

To save a poor sinner like me.

Then to glory I’ll fly, and shout through the sky:

He saved a poor sinner like me.

And that's the reason the Nativity matters.

All together, now:

Aaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!

Striderling, I hope, is whispering to his baby sister that she should not come until the Tuesday after Christmas.

Frugal Christmas

I got this idea from this sweet post. Write out a cute coupon for, say, anywhere from 1 to 5 dollars to be spent at an after Christmas sale at the local thrift shop,  and hang it on the tree.

Last Minute wrapping Organizing Tips and Gifts for Christmas

Use old calendars to make envelopes (we've done this with magazine and catalog pages, too).  Then put some gift coupons in them and put them in the tree for Christmas.


Use old manilla envelopes for wrapping flatter or smaller gifts- decorate them with rubber stamps, potato stamps, stencils (one corner of the package colored in with a tree stencil would be classy), or a single swirl of glue and glitter.  Or tie them with twine and leave plain.


The comic strips, and also the newspaper. Black and White is in, so are words, so is typeprint. Tie with black, red, or white ribbon or yarn. Make name-tags by printing up names on notebook paper.


Fabric- if you have a piece of yardage your recipient would like, or that you were giving to a child for a gift (they love a yard or two of fabric for dress up), or, within the family, some fabric that the recipient will give back to you after unwrapping the package, wrap the present in fabric.  Try it cracker style, tying the ends with ribbon or bias tape.


Small gifts: paint toilet paper tubes and put your gift inside, pushing down the ends of the toilet paper tubes, or wrap them with newspaper or a magazine page, 'Christmas cracker' style.


Paper bags- decorate with stencils, with a design or logo colored on with markers, with squiggle of glue and glitter, with fabric paint, with stickers, with pictures cut out from magazines, leave plain, or just cut out block letters of the recipient's name from craft paper or newspaper, and tape or paste them to the bag. Tie with twine, ribbon, or tape/staple shut.


Out of tape? Tie things shut with ribbon, string, twine, rick rick, yarn, winter scarves,  bungee cords (especially for a guy present). Staple them shut.  Use duct tape (carefully cut into a shape or initial - a triangle tree shape is fairly quick and not too fiddly). 

Use a canning lid to make cute picture frames and ornaments for the grandparents (we've done something similar with tiny pinecones and cardboard, but I like the canning jar lids a lot). The Kings Missus has another really neat gift idea for those of you who are good at couponing (I am not).
You could put out the supplies to do something like the picture frames in canning lids on Christmas day to keep the little ones busy.

Nutcrackers

We used to have a giant mercury glass mouse king to complete the picture, but he broke a couple years ago. I'd love to replace him, as he belonged to Jenny, but I haven't found anything like him.

I love this little fellow in particular:

Frittata with Cheese and Crumbs

Frittata with Cheese and Crumbs

Ingredients:

a stick of butter (half a cup)

2 cups coarse bread crumbs

10 gently beaten eggs

salt and peper to taste

2 teaspoons finely chopped herbs (savory, sage, parsley, basil, chives, you choose)

1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, use a 10 inch ovenproof skillet.
Melt half the butter in the skillet. Stir in bread crumbs and cook, stirring often, utnil they are golden and have absorbed all the butter. Set the crumbs aside. Melt remaining butter over low heat. Sprinkle half the crumbs over the bottom of the skillet. Pour the eggs on top, add salt and pepper, then the herbs. Cook without stirring for just a minute or wo, until the bottom is barely set. ut the skillet in the oven and bake for two more minutes. Sprinkle the cheese and remaining bread crumbs evenly over the top. Bake another minute, remove. Loosen edges, slide frittata onto large serving dish.

Somewhere I have pictures of this, but I can't find them just now. It makes a perfect meal for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.  You can use gluten free bread crumbs if you need to.

Very tasty.

Charity

"In our welfare society there seems less and less need for the Joans, or the Vincent de Pauls, taking on single-handed the miseries of a town or a nation. It is the great accomplishment of our time that alms as medieveal saints understood them are nearly out of date. The poor and the old have state pensions. The sick have a place to turn and a hand to reach for even when it is only a cold public hand. But there are still a thousand lacks and wants.
When we separate ourselves from them, when we make do with a check or our cast-off clothing, a certain brightness falls from the air. To know the joy of charity we must experience the actual pinch of giving- of giving our time to hospitals, our skills to helping the illiterate to read or the crippled to walk, our abilities to comforting those in need of comfort. We are a generous nation, and any emergency brings out the best in us, but there are chronic small distresses which sometimes only an underpaid and overworked agent ever sees; there are always deprived children, the friendless old. There are still prisons and...inadequate nursing staffs and schools begging for amateur aids. Perhaps giving our strength is beyond our capacity. Then charity might consist for us merely in writing a letter which we have put off, or listening, like Hugh, to people's troubles. So long as it is a personal act, we share the saint's secret."

Saint- Watching, by Phyllis McGinley

Community Building Starts with You

But Serving others isn't all about YOU.

Refrigerator Magnets

You know those clear glass beads, or flat marbles, as my son used to call them?  and you know those little advertising magnets you get from local businesses and the insurance company sometimes?

You can make adorable refrigerator (or locker) magnets with them. 

What you need: Those flat marbles, glue, and a bit of old magnet. Scissors. Then either use some fabric from your fabric stash (this Mary Englebreit fabric was given to us).  Find a picture you like on the fabric, trace the flat marble, cut out the fabric, glue it to the back of the glass thingummy. Then cut out a bit of the advertising magnet and glue it to the back as well.  Let dry.  You could make several of these adn package them in a decorated mints can!

Apologies for my bad photography.  The small disc is a picture of a tea bag, and it's much clearer in real life.  You can also use pictures you make with a rubber stamp (cover them with tape before glueing so the colors do not run), or pictures from a magazine.

Four Moms Q and A

 The Four Moms are: 


Kimberly at Raising Olives

Connie, at Smockity Frocks


Kim at Life in a Shoe




And ME!

Speaking of questions, whenever somebody comes up to my husband and says, "I have a question," his standard reply is a cheerful, "Awesome! I have an answer, let's see if they match!"

Q. Santa or No?

A. Gosh, no, not since the Equuschick scarred me off Santa for life.

Q. Status of the Striderling:

A. He does not have a genetic condition that is nearly always fatal, killing 80% to 85% of babies who have it before they are two, putting the survivors into kidney failure in their teens, for which we are deeply grateful. We lived that for a year. He has an even rarer mutation of his calcium receptor genes. Calcium, it turns out, is vital not just for bones and teeth but for communication between nerves, muscle tissue, and brain.
His medication (only prescribed for adults and two infants we know of) helps tell his parathyroid glands not to listen to his defective calcium receptors. His parents have to crush half a pill, mix it with a bit of liquid and give it to him in his g-tube twice a day.
Results: nothing short of amazing. He's crawling everywhere, working on pulling himself to standing, using both hands together more than ever before, moving with more fluidity rather than a jerky, robomatron sort of motion, has finally figured out the drop and release motion with his hand, signs please, points to what he wants, and is quickly catching up to age appropriate milestones.
As it turns out, formula for him could have easily sent him into kidney failure. It's so dangerous that he is prescribed a special low calcium formula. So his mommy's hard work (and the generosity and hard work of all our milk donors, including some of you) really kept him alive and healthy this year, in fact, it's very likely this saves his life. From the time he came home from the NICU until about two weeks past his first birthday, he had breastmilk only.
His sister is due Christmas eve. After birth she will also get her calcium levels checked, but nobody expects this to be a problem. This is just precautionary.

Q. Regarding your amazing five dollar find, That is such a great find! I had never seen one of these before so I looked around on-line...some I saw are also a child's desk if turned over the opposite way of the rocking horse option. Does this one do that as well?

A. Tamara, YES, it does!! I did not realize that! Thanks!

Q. You question could have been here!

Altoids Can Sewing Kit

I lined the bottom with a bit of magnet cut from some business advertisement. This is to keep the pins and needles from falling out. There are needles, pins, safety pins, a few buttons, a bobbin of thread (because it fit nicely), and a seam ripper inside. 

Altoids can, paint, fabric, glue

Sewing kit

Other things to do with Altoids cans:
band-aides, a needle, tweezers, a tube of ointment for a small first aide kid.
fill them with tiny origami boats;
Line it complete with felt, or with foam in which you've cut out a shae the right size to make an iPod holder. 

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Easy Christmas Craft, Paper Lanterns

Remember these from Kindergarten?

Blynken hadn't made them before, and he was enchanted. "Just like in Tangled," he said with awe.
Supplies:
Craft paper, construction paper, or scraps of wrapping paper, even the paper from a pretty paper bag
scissors
tape or glue
ribbon if you like, but you can also make the handle by using a narrow strip of your paper

Cut your paper into a rectangle. The size is up to you, but I prefer small ones, so cut my rectangles into approximately 3-5 inch long rectangles.

Fold the rectangle in half the long way, and rub your finger, the handle of your scissors, a spoon, a ruler, or a bone folder along the creased edge.

Starting at the fold, cut parrallel lines or strips about 4/5 of the way up the paper- leaving an uncut border at the top.  The border should be around a 1/4 of an inch, but the main thing is not to leave it so thin that you can't attach ribbon to it or roll the paper into a cylinder without tearing it.

Unfold the paper- you will have a series of parallel cuts with an uncut border on each of the edges of the paper. I like mind rather narrow, but you can make them wider.

Now put a dab of glue at each of the four corners, and lightly glue (or use glue stick) along the edge of one of the short ends, then roll the shorter ends of the paper into a cylinder, gluing or taping it= stand it on end and if necessary, apply gentle pressure to the top to make it flare out thus:

Tape or glue ribbon inside the top for hanging- you can also make the handle from a strip of the same paper or in a contrasting color.  Just tape each end of the strip to opposide inside edges of the top of your lantern.

Hang these up on the tree or over a garland, or make a long garland of them by attaching them to ribbons.

I like them best over Christmas lights, of course.

Other last minute Christmas ideas