from the library (finally!) to think about, and a DanceDanceRevolution resolution to conquer.
(The trick, fellow four-year-olds, is to get the edge of your ruler flush with the edge of what you want to measure. Notice the impeccable form above).
I went to the library and got both a Voltron AND a Thundercats DVD set, but I did not get the book the library ordered and put on hold for me about how to make Waldorf dolls, on account of the librarian was being very weird ("But [my name] has to be present to pick up her hold item." "Um, I'm Julie." "Do you have an ID?" "I have my library card." "Well..."). I'm not kidding you, she looked exactly like the ballot judge who gave me the loopy voting machine intro on Election Day.
I put some nifty little Valentine gifties up on my etsy shop:
I added some New Years' Resolutions to my list (gardening, and seed sprouting).
I got my partners for Craftster's Valentine's Classroom Card swap.
I made this weird but delicious chili-soup thing: You put in the veggie chili mix stuff, but then you put in all your leftover and freezer veggies and fill the pot the rest of the way up with veggie broth, and you get your partner to make up a batch of Bob's Red Mill gluten-free cornbread. Then you mix it all up in a little Pyrex bowl just for you:
I played DanceDance Revolution. A lot.
I ate some more cornbread with ginger jam.
And the big kid is here now to remind me that it's Family Art time.
Ooh, and I think my coccyx has finally healed!
P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
--instead of what I'm currently gazing at, which is, in essence, you guys I suppose, so take that as you will--hee!
I wrote up my New Year's Resolutions on the car ride home in my newest and most bestest friend ever (although I took a hefty break around St. Louis to fiddle with and curse Matt's new GPS thingie--you'd think it would know that one whole damn highway has been closed for three months and help us navigate AROUND it to get to Whole Foods, but no, it's all "Take that one highway! No, seriously, take that one particular highway!" Grrr). Here is where I stand:
P.S. Check out my two posts about my Mama's old quilts and how to care for them over at Crafting a Green World.
We loved it.
The girls draw pictures and stick on stickers, and ask me to do "color work" with them (I have to write the name of each color (usually in that color) in list format, then draw a box next to each name so that the girl can color the box in its appropriate color--for some reason the kids freakin' love this, and as I've suspected for some time that Will's going to be a whole language reader, it's cool by me.
I adore it. Ample and bountiful pages for lists of every kind and dimension, bound in a book small enough to keep in my back pocket, permanent enough for me to keep and refer to and not lose, communal enough that I can write in it while the girls work in theirs, special enough that I can take the care to fancy it up.
Big ceramic cat. One time when I was in college, I was saying something to Mama, and she didn't hear my right, and thought that I was saying that I wanted to take this big ceramic cat away with me, and she FREAKED. OUT.
Mama's bell collection. There are two more knick-knack shelves just like this one to the left and right in this hallway, which is so narrow that Matt, who lumbers around like some kind of bear-man, is always just about to crash into them and knock them all, shattered, to the ground every time he goes to the bathroom.
Chairbacks of the dining room chairs. The dining room sits in what used to be Aunt Pam's bedroom, until they knocked the wall out. I don't know what Pam did then. 
Photo of my cousin Amy as a child. Cousin Amy was quite a bit wealthier than me, and her parents always generously brought Mama bags and bags of her outgrown clothes for me every time they visited. Amy was older, however I was much fatter, and being forced to try on dozens of her adorable, barely-worn, stylish, too-skinny clothes every few months is among my more miserable memories.
Mama's snowglobe collection. She collected snowglobes late in her life, so that when we were still dating Matt gave Mama that snowglobe of San Francisco there in the foreground.
The 70s-era orange and yellow mushrooms have been right there, in the kitchen, over the wood paneling, for as long as I can remember. They face across the breakfast nook a giant wooden fork and spoon, and a little wooden crate with a plastic hen and a couple of plastic eggs in it.
The Serenity Prayer, cross stitched perhaps by my mother? Its sentiment is well-taken, I hope, in a life in which I, myself, can't control nearly as much as I'd like to or feel called to.