Tuesday, October 7, 2008

The Red Cross Gives Me Stuff

Yes, it is my office hours, and so yes, I should be grading stuff, but I just had a ten-minute consultation with a student about her Project #2, and that calls for a half-hour blogging break, right?

In half an hour, I can tell you that today, I baked Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Brownies with my squabbling girlies. I hosted a playdate for one of Will's little girlfriends, during which they dragged out every toy owned by either of my children, all of which had been put back in their appropriate spots by me the night before in preparation for said playdate. I sewed ornaments for our Halloween tree while watching season 4 of Numb3rs. At 4:30 pm, I took a shower. I spent half an hour looking for two tutus and one pair of ballet flats. I read some of , which is so far even better than the Twilight series (we're politely pretending that the final book of that series didn't happen, aren't we? Good). But before all that, way at the crack of 9:00 am, the girls and I took their child-sized real metal shopping cart and a big cardboard box over to FREE DAY AT THE RED CROSS BOOK SALE!!!!!
I wrote in a previous comment that I was torn between taking my girls to the children's section or the crafts book table first, knowing that while visiting one, the other would be thoroughly picked over. You know the solution to this problem? Nice old lady volunteer. She took the girls to the children's section and helped them choose books while I gave the crafts table a quick once-over, then ravaged the nature tables for plant and animal books with good illustrations for collaging. The nice old lady system wasn't perfect, as she limited them to picturebooks and her selection was a little religion-heavy (eek!), but I snuck back later and got all the cool stuff, too.

Look at the awesome morbid Santa illustration--he's all grey and dead-looking, and are those badminton birdies falling all around him? I found some other books with Christmas-y scenes, as well--we have about five ornaments in our house, and I'd like to make a ton for our tree and as gifts, maybe with an image decoupaged to each side of a die-cut or cardboard cut-out and then mod podged.

I also found a ton more records for future record bowls--ten or so old-school Disney movie soundtracks and a dozen or so Christmas albums, some old atlases for the girls to cut up when they're decorating the big maps they like me to print out for them, a couple of cheezy craft books that might have some cool projects in them and also might not, lots of vintage children's books, LOTS of books for the cutting and coloring bin (If you and your kiddos don't have a bin of outdated old books to use in art projects, you are totally missing out on some serious awesomeness), and some random kid's book with this most fabulous illustration:

I don't really knit myself, and so I don't know what to do with this fabulous illustration, but it is totally fabulous, right? I'll think of something.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

As someone who does knit--that is definitely a fabulous illustration.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and The Host? What do you think? I want to read it, but I don't want to buy it without a good recommendation.

julie said...

I got my copy from the library, and it is really good. Different from her vampire books, especially that last one, bless her heart. I read a lot of sci-fi, although I'm certainly not as avid as many, and I've so far found this book to be quite an original reconception of its sub-genre (I don't want to be a spoiler!). I'm only halfway through, though, so she could crash and burn, but I sort of think that Meyer's failures with her last Twilight novel could have happened because she was focused on and passionate about this book instead of that one--this one, at least, reads as more focused and passionate.

One of her characters does acquire the nickname of Wanda, however. Ick.

Kimberly said...

Oh, Meg (she's my officemate) reminded me to ask you: Did you get the Chinese cookbook that Matt *ahem* relocated behind a bookcase?

julie said...

No, and boy is he bummed! The rat gave ME the job of unrelocating it on Tuesday morning, but I just did not have the balls to do it--that nice old lady volunteer was all sniffing around, ready to be of service, and the kids, of course, were screeching and rattling their freakin' metal shopping cart all over the place and drawing attention to us, and the bookshelf that he'd stuck it behind was in a part of the children's section that had already been emptied so there would be no reason for me to be kneeling down in front of a bookshelf there and fishing behind it--and seriously, the guy couldn't pay 50 cents to CHARITY to buy his own Chinese cookbook? It's not like we ever even cook, anyway.

I am thrifty, but my husband, I tell you, is CHEAP!