New Inspiration Blog: A Magical Childhood

It seems this blog has been around for quite awhile but I just stumbled across it and I just had to share. It's called A Magical Childhood and is a blog full of ideas for making every day with your child that, magical. Not in the spiritual sense but it could be applied that way. To me my children's laughter is spiritual in itself and I look forward to doing some of these activities with my kids. Especially now that Lil' R is getting to the age where he can begin to do this stuff.

I'm going through her archives and I bet her children have a lot of fun. There is everything from playing in the mud, dancing in the rain, salt paintings, building towers out of blocks with shaving cream as the mortar, and many more. Often she links to other sites but she appears to be a wealth of a resource.  I hope you all enjoy it too.

We're Now Mobile Friendly

Blogger informed me today that I can now set my blog to have a mobile version for viewing, awesomeness! So if you have a smartphone check us out and if you have a Blogger blog yourself you'll find the setting under Settings -> Email & Mobile.

I wish I could quilt

And more so I wish I could make this! Actually instead of R2-D2 I'd really want Wickett, yeah I admit it. I have a soft spot for Ewoks.

Technorati Tags: R2-D2,quilting,flickr,starwars,crafts,awesome

New Blog Tool - Embed.ly

Besides sewing and crafting you all should know by now is that I'm a huge geek and I'm always on the look out for the coolest newest technology. Well I came around this in my blog roll and thought I'd share it since so many have their own blogs they may find it useful. It's a service that helps to embed about anything you want into your blog. Want to imbed a CNN video, a tweet, Facebook, or something from deviantART? It currently supports 218 services.

Here is a test embedding an article from Wikipedia.

A blog (a blend of the term web log)^[1] is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.^[2]

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.

And a video from National Geographic

 

Technorati Tags: blog tools,embedding,embed.ly

 

A lot of the services are video or photo services so for someone who often writes blogs commenting on current events, movies, etc. this could be really useful. I'm not sure  how often I'll get to use it. I know it'd be a lot more if I started making Youtube videos of tutorials etc. but I don't see that happening too soon. Until then it's just a nifty thing to know.

Big Butt Baby Pants

When it comes to sewing patterns made by RAE has some great ones. Last fall I purchased from her the Big Butt Baby Pants pattern which is specifically designed for the big butt of a cloth diapered baby and I finally got around to sewing 2 pairs this weekend for Wee Rose. See we were starting to run into an issue with her in regards to pants. Because of the cloth diapers and that she's a chunky monkey she's gone up in sizes by leaps and bounds. She'll be 11 months next week and already we're putting her in 18 month clothes. If it's a t-shirt often she can wear a 12 month size but if it's pants the 12 months look like Speedos.

 

I'm happy to say that the pattern is a huge success!! I forsee myself making quite a few pairs of these in the next few months. For my first try I used some quilting cotton I had laying around which I have no pictures of her in. It was really to make sure I didn't screw up using the cute fabric. For the second pair I used this adorable cotton print fabric I made a dress out of for my niece. There was the perfect amount left to make Wee Rose the pants.  The size I made is a bit long but I just cuff the pants up and she seems to get around okay. I may do a basic hand stitch to keep them where I want but easy enough to remove once she grows taller. The patterns has directions for multiple variations including a ruffled butt panel. I think I may try that out for the next pair. I also want to set some jersey knit and make up a few that would be great for pajamas. This may call for a thrift store raid to look for interesting fabric.

made by RAE has a lot of great patterns for boys and girls. Please go check her out!

 

Technorati Tags: baby,sewing,pants,made by RAE,cloth diapers,infant

Meal Planning Fail

Technorati Tags: cooking,organization,menuplanning

So I fell off the meal planning wagon. After our vacation to Florida Pagan Gathering I got completely screwed up. We came back and I immediately needed to grocery shop for a weeks groceries with no meals figured out. I also had to go back to work immediately so I didn't really have to free time to figure it out either. Well yes that was a few weeks ago and I still haven't gotten the full swing back.

This is horrible because without knowing what to cook our food bill went up immediately. I mean the difference was $40 when I bought things "just encase" I mean it isn't like the food went bad it's in the pantry or freezer still to be eaten but we didn't need to buy it. If I don't get my act together quick though we're going to repeat this all over again. I go shopping again this weekend and only have a handful of meals down on the calendar.

I think part of the problem is that I'm bored with I've been cooking. I need to change things up a bit. It can't be too much though or I know I'll feel overwhelmed. I picked up the Sneaky Chef Cookbooks because Lil 'R won't eat a vegetable save his life right now. I've already started adding a puree of sweet potatoes and carrots to our mac 'n cheese which he doesn't notice but I need to add more and more green vegetables at that. It has this recipe for egg and bacon breakfast bars that I want to make within the next few days.

Anyone have any favorite recipes that they cook that can be done either in the crockpot or within 30 minutes at night? I suck at making things ahead of time though I really wish that wasn't the case. If I could do that I know we'd be eating a thousand times better.

New Site

I finally have begun launching everything for my home business. I just finished up the first posts on the blog. From there you'll find links to the Facebook page where the shop is located and also a link to the new Facebook I'm running for parents who follow any form of pagan spirituality.

This blog will continue to exist as a personal outlet with hopefully more entries. I think I just have too high of aspirations. I need to first post regularly and build connections. I worry too much about doing big posts and get so caught up in them needing to be these big things. I need to think baby steps.

Baby steps.