Important video to watch about the Gulf oil spill
29 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment
in General
This video was blocked on YouTube because of its impact.
I’m speechless at this one. Just watch it.
Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning
29 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment
in General
Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning.
The above linked article is of utmost importance if you and your loved ones spend any time in or on the water. What you’ve seen on TV and in the movies is NOT what drowning looks like. It’s a lot more subtle and easy to mistake for.. treading water.
Educate yourselves and keep safe!
Decoupaged flower pots
28 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment
in Crafts
I’ve decided to re-run some of my old crafting articles from other sites I used to write on. Unfortunately, the pictures that go with them are long since gone the way of the dodo bird, but they aren’t really necessary to these projects! Enjoy!
Decoupaged Flower Pots
Decoupage is fun and easy, and a wonderful way to brighten up otherwise dull and colorless items.
For this project, you will need:
A terra cotta flower pot
Paper napkins with pretty motifs, pictures cut from magazines, wallpaper and giftwrap scraps, fabric motifs
Decoupage medium such as Mod Podge, Glossy or Matte, depending on how much shine you want. You can also make a good Matte medium by thinning Elmer’s glue with an equal amount of water
Acrylic craft paint in the color of your choice
Foam paint brush
Regular paint brush, wide and flat
Directions:
Wash the flower pot and let it completely dry. I recommend washing the night before you plan to do this project, as terra cotta takes a while to thoroughly dry.
When the pot is dry, paint it in a color (or colors!) that coordinate with whatever motif you have decided to add to the pot.
Trim your motif(s). You can get a nice effect by tearing carefully instead of using scissors.
Using the sponge brush, spread a thin layer of Mod Podge on to the pot. Press a motif on to the Mod Podge and smooth it carefully with your fingers. To avoid wrinkles you can slice the motif from its bottom to its center and slightly overlap the cut edges.
Continue to add motifs until the pot looks the way you would like it to. You can use one or many motifs, it’s completely up to you! A single motif such as a sunflower is a beautiful focal point, while a sunflower atop a bunch of leaf motifs that are overlapped will give another sort of impression.
Apply a thin layer of Mod Podge over each motif as you add them to the flower pot.
Trim the motifs at the top and bottom of the pot so that they don’t curl over the edges.
Once you’ve got all the motifs on there that you’d like, set it aside to dry. When it has completely dried, coat the entire pot and all motifs with another layer of Mod Podge. Let dry again!
Fill your pot with soil and plant a seed, or fill it with small gravel and insert some silk flowers. This will look fantastic on an end table or windowsill, or on a desk. It makes a lovely housewarming gift as well!
Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus review
27 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment
in Reviews
Where oh where to begin?
This movie could have been SO great! What a premise! Prehistoric enormous shark and octopus, locked in deadly battle while the sea froze around them are released from a miles thick block of ice when a civilian helicopter with a military guy drops some super secret sonar beeper into the North Atlantic. And Debbie Gibson is there to witness it!
They could have had so many great moments with this film. Blood, gore, thrills, jump scenes. The only blood is a blackish fog in the sea when Mega Shark bites the same tentacle off of Giant Octopus.. twice. Huh? No gore. No suspense at all. Sam and I sat there trying to laugh at the movie, but it wasn’t even laughably bad. It was yawningly bad.
In the beginning Debbie Gibson is in a mini submarine, and she can’t tell if her fingernails are painted or not, as each shot of her shows her with now painted, now unpainted nails. Oops for the continuity editor! Apparently she has stolen this sub from the private corporation she works for, from which she gets canned. She then goes to live with her former professor, a man who cannot decide if he is Irish or Texan based on his Most Awesome accent shifting capabilities.
Wandering off to the beach, there’s some kind of giant sand sculpture thing there that is intended to be the bloated corpse of a whale (or something!). She yanks a chunk of something out of it, returns to the professor’s house, and after many interesting chemistry experiments apparently involving kool aid and that stuff in glow sticks, determines that it’s part of an ELEVEN FOOT LONG TOOTH! ZOMG!
Guy from Japan comes over “undiplomatically” to help, thus making Lorenzo Lamas play free and easy with the “sharkzilla” comments.
And yeah, Lorenzo Lamas? Didn’t he DIE twenty years ago? Oops, guess not, more’s the pity.
Lorenzo plays a military tough guy who never once dons a uniform, or changes his clothes for that matter. He wears a black tee shirt, black pants, and black blazer, and has his long greasy hair tied back in a girly pony tail throughout the film.
Debbie and the Japanese guy get hot for each other and do it in the broom closet, thus realizing that the answer to the problem with the giant critters is pheromones. Uh. So they try to trap Mega Shark in San Francisco Bay, where he promptly eats the Golden Gate Bridge, while Japanese guy goes to trap Doc Oc in Tokyo Bay. This doesn’t work.
So using pheromones they lure the giant beasties that go bump in the night back to the North Atlantic. Debbie, Lorenzo, and the prof are in a navy sub, while Akira Kurasawa or whatever his name is is in some Japanese sub on the other side of the planet, but manages to get there Just! In! Time! to save Debbie’s neck.
Somebody explain to me how a privately owned mini sub gets attached to a US navy sub, btw, because the same mini sub from the beginning features prominently here near the end.
The final battle between the two critters lasts about thirty five seconds and is as dull as it gets.
The last scene is Debbie and the Japanese guy (also lovingly referred to as “The Jap” by Lorenzo) sitting on a beach. Prof comes up and says, dudes, something weird in the North Atlantic! And they all race off happily into the sequel: Enormous Platypus vs. Humongous Wildebeast.
I ha
ven’t really discussed the subs the critters eat, or the oil rig, or the plane that Mega Shark leaps three miles out of the water to eat simply because they cut away from those scenes so quickly that there’s no fun in them whatsoever.
Don’t waste your time. Seriously. If you want to see high camp and fun in a basically silly thriller movie premise, check out Snakes on a Plane.
Now THAT is a fun movie!
Things To Do This Summer | Summer Activities for Kids
26 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment
in Reviews
One of my favorite websites is Grandparents.com. I have three grandchildren, but they all live on the east coast, so I don’t get to spend any real time with them. However, this site isn’t just for grandparents. Parents and people who spend any amount of time with kids will find it to be a valuable resource of activities, games, and fun for kids and adults of all ages.
A few weeks ago, Grandparents.com put together a listing of over 100 summer activities to do with children, broken down into categories such as Indoor fun, outdoor fun, water fun, and more. If you have bored kids on your hands, definitely check this out! I know that it’s been saving my sanity with three adolescent kids here in the Texas heat!
Ian’s wacky sense of humor
26 Jun 2010 1 Comment
So I go out to the living room and encounter Sean sitting and staring in deep concentration at the TV, Wii Remote in hand. The TV screen is solid black.
“Looks like a really interesting game, Sean!” say I.
Ian pipes up: “It’s called Night Time In Outer Space… 4.”
*snerk*
That kid makes me LAUGH sometimes!
Just a dog
26 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment
in Chicken Soup, General, Parenting
(Note: I wrote this essay about eight months ago, when we had to put our beloved Bear to sleep)
Three years ago a fat little roly poly pup followed my boys home from a walk. After we located his owner and found out they were looking to rehome him, Chunk became Bear McWhorter, and joined our family.
Half sharpei, half labrador, we told everybody he was a sharprador peitriever.
I’ve never had a more DOGGY dog in my life. His entire body would wriggle with delight when somebody walked through the door. He would try to converse with us in dog language, unusual sounds that weren’t quite low volume barks. He would roll on his back and demand tummy rubs. He chewed through a rawhide bone every few days and he could run like the dickens.
Unfortunately, he had some moments of very severe aggression. He nearly killed a kitten we adopted about six months ago. He bit Ian once (Ian deserved it, but it’s part of a pattern). He savaged the neighbor’s dog. He would fight with any dog, any time, even when leashed.. and he was STRONG. Too strong for the kids to hold him back when that started.
Last night he went after my cat, Pixel. He had her by the neck and threw her about two feet into the air.
It was his last chance, we had decided after the kitten if we saw another sign of aggression, we would have to put him down. Too risky.
At 3:30 today, Sam, Sean and I took Bear to the vet. Sean was always, from the start, Bear’s boy. Honestly I think Sean loved that dog more than anything in his life. We told Sean he didn’t have to go, and his response was “Bear is MY dog. I’m not going to abandon him NOW, I need to see him through and to the other side.”
The vet couldn’t find a vein, and Bear began to panic. Sean held himself together, soothing the pooch, talking to him calmly and peacefully. The vet gave Bear a sedative, and while it took effect, Bear’s boy cuddled him, told him over and over what a Good Boy he was, how much he was loved, Good dog, Good Bear, Woof Woof Bow Wow Big Bear Doggy Woggle.
Then the vet came back in and found a vein. Sean held his dog throughout, Sam and I also patting him, all three of us murmuring words of love to our dog. And his breathing slowed and slowed. And just as his took his last breath, Sean said “I love you, Bear” and Bear was gone.
The vet said “I’m so sorry” and left the room, leaving us with our dead.
And that’s when Sean broke down, wrapped his arms around that big floppy dog and sobbed as if his heart were breaking.. which it was. I am not ashamed to say that Sam and I were crying too.
The whole family feels bereft. And so we did something to help us along our healing path.
We saved a life, today. We went straight to the humane society, where we adopted a pretty little pooch who was scheduled to be euthanized at 6 PM today. Not to replace Bear, he can’t be replaced. But to bring a little balance, and to give us a dog to love, because there is a dog shaped hole in our family now, and it needed filling, especially for the children’s sake.
The call of the wild… boys!
26 Jun 2010 1 Comment
Maaa.. we’re almost out of fluoride rinse!
Maaa… can we make steaks for snack?
Maa… can I run around barefoot in the mud and ice cold rain and get pneumonia?
Maaaaaa! Hey Ma! I have two MP3 players, may I buy another please, for my third ear?
Maa.. I forgot to do my homework, my chores, and take a shower, that’s OK, right Ma?
Maaa! We’re down to the last box of dishwasher detergent!
Oh, Ma? I forgot, there’s a field trip tomorrow and I need you to sign the form, give me $30, and oh yeah, I volunteered you as a parent supervisor, hope you don’t mind!
Maaa! I love you Ma!
It’s that last one that I keep hanging around here for. 
Old friends and Christian growth
25 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment
in Chicken Soup, Faith
A year or so ago I reconnected with my old friend Gerda.
Gerda and I met about 20 years ago, when I was pregnant with Amy. We were both Avon ladies, and I had become the new order drop-off point in the neighborhood, so Gerda began coming to my house every couple of weeks to drop off her order.
She and I hit it off pretty quickly, even though we were such opposites in many ways. Gerda was a Christian, I was into paganism and tarot cards at the time. She was a conservative Republican, I was a liberal Democrat. We had had entirely different upbringings, entirely different lifestyles, but something connected for the two of us, and we became fast friends.
During our friendship, Gerda never once tried to cram her faith down my throat. She led by example, by being a Godly woman. Yes, she told me her opinions and beliefs on things when I asked, but she was never one of those “Bible thumping” Christians so many people dread. I knew that she prayed for me and my family, but she never forced anything on me. Like my friends Meg and Cil, Gerda was one of those people God set in my path to show me what a Christian really is.
We lost touch, Gerda and I, somewhere along the line, but I never forgot her. She is one of those special people that touched my life so profoundly that I have thought of her many, many times over the years and wondered how she was doing.
After I found her blog on the web, we started reconnecting. It was my joy to tell her that I’ve found my way back to God, and we’ve been really enjoying refreshing our friendship.
Along the way of re-acquainting ourselves one with the other, Gerda shared some really uplifting thoughts with me about Jesus and about being a Christian. Like in the old days of our friendship, Gerda always makes me want to be a better person, and once again I find myself trying to mend my poor behavioral habits, such as swearing and being quick to anger.
Having good friends who are more experienced in the Christian life is a very good thing. Everybody needs friends like this to seek guidance and thought from, to pray with and for, to learn from and to try to emulate.
Good friends of this kind can help deepen your faith and bring you closer to God.
I have prayed my gratefulness to God for bringing Gerda back in to my life.
May you all find a Gerda of your own.
