Have you and your kids checked out this site lately?

Go. Fire up your printer and drag out your specialty papers (like magnet paper and cardstocks and iron-on paper for tee shirts and stuffs) and prepare to change your color ink cartridges.

Enjoy.

I think she’s a gifted artist.

Ah, and speaking of gifted artists, someone who lives at my house won third prize in an art category at the fair with her oil pastel drawing of “Me and My Brother Charlie as Cool Teenagers.”

But she’s not thrilled with art class at school, where they never do anything really fun, she says, and instead, they cut out shapes all the time. My friend reminded me yesterday that they’re working at all kindergartener skill levels right now, including kindergarteners who haven’t had scissors and paints at their disposal since they were old enough to grasp them, and I hadn’t really considered that, so I’m happy enough all over again, but I’m also halfway kinda sorta looking for an outside art teacher.

Gotta fill all that free time we have, you know.

(I doubt we will find one who could fit into our schedule–I’d love someone who could come to my office once or twice a week in the afternoon–but I’m going to poke around nonetheless.)

Feeling lazy, half-sick and only moderately crafty this week. Here’s where you should direct your attention:

*Gorgeous new babyness from my friend Gilley.

*Bright, fun coin quilty goodness. I love quilts with lots of white in the background.

*Of course, I can’t talk quilts (esp quilts with lots of white in the background) without Small Hands–I love everything she makes.

*We need a little pea stuffie to go with our fantastic book of the same name. When I went to read to the girlchild’s kindergarten class last month, I chose this book from our house. The kids screamed with laughter.

*In my head, fall is the time to cook. Is it that way for everyone, or is it just my body looking to up fat stores for the chilly deep south winter? I’m reading the Smitten Kitchen, which has evolved into a glorious food blog.

*I’m a fickle piggy foody girl. I’m also reading a new food blog by cookbook writer Faye. The recipes look wonderful and I’ll buy her book when it comes out. I got lucky: Faye commented here awhile back and I found her blog that way.

*Christmas/birthday shopping for a very big girl who is as hands-on as her mama is not an easy thing because (a) she owns every normal, decent arts and crafts item imaginable and (b) the items she doesn’t already own are probably not age-appropriate. However, Molly Chicken’s Raggy Flower Tutorial convinced me to finally suck it up and suffer the pounds to dollars conversion rate for a rag rugger kit. I found mine on ebay and for the low, low price of $40 on my end, it should be here by the weekend. I think McPantses will enjoy wads of fabric scraps and burlap, don’t you?

*When an artist who blogs marries, people like me are in for a treat. Ahhhh.

*I define good art in two separate ways. First, there’s art that evokes a good feeling for me, or strong feelings. My second definition, and one that wouldn’t apply to everyone, is art that makes me want to create something like it, or that makes me want to try out those tools and technique. (I’ve finally grown-up enough to know that just because I might try the technique doesn’t mean I will ever accomplish anything like what I liked well enough to try in the first place.) Right now, I like Amanda Blake.

*And French Toast Girl.

*And, different still, Julianna Smith.

*Hop Skip Jump, for bunny ears and pirate monkeys and oooh-aaah.

*Talented sewing across the pond.

*It’s the most chocolate money wasteful time of the year! My local store doesn’t have it in stock yet. I’m torn between spending $40 on two cans of hot chocolate (incl shipping) and just waiting for it to get here and spending the equivalent in shipping costs in the hassle of getting it from the store here.

In the spirit of wasteful chocolate time, I’ll leave you with one of the things I ate every night while the Husband was gone last week: two squares of bittersweet chocolate baked into a phyllo dough crust.

Simple recipe: thaw and roll out phyllo or puff pastry. Cut into an even number of same-sized squares. Put chocolate on square, sprinkle w/cinnamon sugar, top with square, press sides together.

Bake at temp recommended for the pastry. If you are nice, save one for your kindergartener for breakfast. Rewarm the next night after all children have gone to bed and enjoy secretly.

that there’s another wee bit of babylove in my great state today, but I will wait until the mom announces it herself to post more.

The other word on the street is that I am knitting one of these out of Sockotta yarn because that’s all my crazy LYS had and that so far, the leg part is easy. I figure it’s easier to make, screw up and start over a kidsock than an adult sock, so that’s where I’m starting with the sockness.

I have completely confounded the carpool line director, though, who has (a) never seen anyone knit in carpool and (b) has never seen anyone knit on 4 dpns.

So, there you go.

For good.

The Husband left for parts north on Sunday afternoon (after spending all day Saturday in the same parts north with his father cheering on the team, but who’s counting days gone? pas moi) and he will be home tomorrow.

I have feasted every night since he’s been gone, but I am lonely and tired and ready for him to be back. Here’s the grown-up part: I took two pictures of my still-bountiful (much to my great chagrin, mortification and dismay) cleavage on my new picture phone to send to him for laughs.

Actually, that’s not the grown-up part, is it? That’s the silly embarassment-making part where I should be thinking of words like “tipsy,” only being grown-up means that tipsy doesn’t get to happen when I’m manning the house. I deleted the pictures and sent, instead, pictures of two mournful sleeping dogs and one of myself making a sad frowny face.

I deleted cleavage pics and sent dog pics instead. I did the mature thing, what with the pics going straight to his work e-mail address and all.

Did I tell you that one of the mournful sleeping dogs ate my cell phone off the kitchen counter a couple of weeks ago? That’s why I got a picture phone. In all my years of mobile phone usage, I’ve never paid a cent for a phone, so I semi-treated myself on a model that was $10 more expensive than the non-camera phone. Plus I gave myself 400 messages a month to include all the cleavage shots I want to mail out to my husband’s office e-mail.

Being a grown-up is so unfun.

On an unrelated note, I have a few Things to Say, but I’ve been forcefully kept away from a place where I can say them both at work (where I’ve worked with the public–gack–for the past several days and where writing in solitary confinement doesn’t happen so much when the public is gaping at me like a zoo exhibit) and at home, where my lonely nights have been spent cooking, eating, knitting, dozing and finally, when all else fails, dragging my bloated carcass into bed. I have some recipes for you and I have some thoughts about small children and creativity and the very fine balance between raising creative kids and polite kids and not squelching our kids to make them conform into society’s “seen and not heard” baloney while still somehow managing to have kids who are fit to be seen and not heard so much all the time full blast.

Edit: after some thought (and no fussing on anyone’s part), I’m taking it back because who am I to rain on someone’s fantastic free worldwide publicity parade? Any press = good press. I think Fontaine Maury got tons of notice today and that is flat out awesome.

So there. And the cleavage shots are gone, baby, gone, and deleted foreverandever so don’t even ask. Mwah.

(That’s an air kiss because I am a grownup now and mature-acting, thoughtful grown-up women hug and fake air kiss and I do not hug, so an air kiss is the best I can do.)

Tomorrow morning, stationery company Fontaine Maury will have some of its newest products displayed and [I assume] ooh-ed and aaah-ed over on the Today Show, which is doing a segment on monogrammed gift products.

I’m setting the DVR. You do it, too.

I think this is big stuff.

I would like to own two balls/skeins/whatevers of Trekking XXL yarn in colorway 126, which seems to be rarer than a good diamond right now. If you can link me to a source, I will send you something from my crafty hoardy stash of good stuff.

HUZZAH! Someone from Skacel emailed me to tell me that it’s available at a Washington state yarn shop called Renaissance Yarns and two skeins (and a set of DPNs in the appropriate size) are headed my way.

They have about 30 skeins of the yarn: go forth and order, via phone. Once I see it for myself, I might order more, just to hoard because once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

(I want this yarn because if I am going to knit socks, I might as well do them in fabulously fun pink/cream/brown yarn.)

where all the gorgeous babies are born, even the Mississippi natives…

Very happy news over at Rachel’s blog! Go welcome her beautiful, beloved daughter into the world.

Today, while I ran to the doctor’s office with McPantses, who is suffering lately from gory, gushing nosebleeds (I keep telling her to lay off the coke, but does she listen? noooooooo),* the Husband and the boychild had the following conversation:

Crabcake: “Paypahhhh!” (and then throws a wadded up piece of paper off of the white table where he’s sitting and snacking on cheddar bunnies)

The Husband: picks up paper wad and hands it back to the Crabcake, who has us all trained.

Repeat above many times.

The Husband hands back the paper wad again and says, “That’s IT. I’m not picking up the paper again.”

The Crabcake looks at the Husband with pure devilishness in his eyes and throws the paper wad down and looks at the Husband with a “pick it up now, bitch” face.

The Husband shakes his head and says “No. No more. Get it yourself.”

The Crabcake pitches a mini fuss and the Husband says no and the Crabcake escalates his fuss level from mini to moderate to aggravating to ear-splittingly loud and terrible and the entire time, the Husband stands firm. “No.”

The Crabcake stops altogether, looks at the Husband seriously and yells

“ROLL TAHHHHHDE!”

The Husband says, “Okay, here’s your paper.”

It’s Saturday in Alabama, folks. Roll Tide.

* The scene in her bedroom this morning was like something from Carrie. She has a scratch inside her nose and it shouldn’t require any treatment whatsoever, but we are to watch for frequent bruising. Eek. I hope I never have to help my child wash blood out of her hair again–when she stretched out in the tub, the water went red and rusty.