, and if you haven't looked into it yet, you should! So crazy did I make my daughter on Facebook that she told me years ago I should get on Pinterest, because I would "like it better". I acted just like her child and thought "She doesn't even know me. I don't need to spend any more time on the computer than I do now!" THEN I started looking for ideas or recipes that I knew I had "shared", but couldn't remember when. Looking back and trying to find them drove me INSANE. How those people at FB manage to keep tabs on all of us is beyond me. I would not want that job, let me tell you. But that's another story, and one I am in no mood for today.
Today I feel fall in the air and it's my favorite time of year. It was Laura Ingalls Wilder's favorite time too. Her daughter wrote that "it was a time of summing up, of taking stock, and being prepared for winter". I can't put it any better than that. I am going to have my beloved Abigail Lea for a few days and she loves nothing more than donning an apron and helping. Plus, Christmas is right around the corner and I have a problem with shopping. Well, not shopping, but going into malls. I can't breathe in there and, well, the drive there and the parking lot is usually enough to make me want to crawl under a table and cry. Or just sit in my car and while while I send the kids in with a list. hahaha. That's not really a joke. It's absolutely true. This little Chromebook has been my best friend because I can "shop" at home. This is my favorite part of the 21st century so far. If you can't afford an actual laptop, I highly recommend the Chromebook for less than $200. I got mine on sale for $100. It simply surfs the net with the Chrome browser, which blows Explorer away.
Pinterest is a file sharing website that lets you "pin" ideas and directions to various cyber "bulletin boards" so that you can quickly and easily find them again.
Last year I decided to make handmade gifts and they went over so well that this year I decided to get an early start.
Today I went and got stuff to make several things for gifts that I think will go over very well.
Here is a list of ideas I got the supplies for today.
I figure this will be good in a basket for younger people who still drink, occasionally, but are stuck at home on New Years. Even people who don't drink might break these out with family in for holidays or, say, an ice storm or blizzard. What better way to spend the time playing cards until the wee hours and nipping on some Vodka Cherries? Plus, they are so pretty I just really couldn't resist. And for people who do still drink this is a classy no-brainer, my favorite of all gifts. This link will take you right to the guy's blog, which looks really good. I can always find it again by going to Pinterest and clicking on the picture of my Recipe board, which will take me directly to his site. Cool, huh?
AND, if you are surfing the web and, say, price matching, you get a little Pinterest icon so that you can click on it and save whatever you are looking at to any board you create yourself. So it's a great time saver when you don't have time to fully explore the site at the moment.
Initials I can't get a picture to load and this is actually an Etsy website, so you can
just buy them, but they would be easy to make yourself. I personally love and collect buttons. Some of my favorite memories as a small child are of going through my mother or grandmother's "button boxes". These will be good for anyone who likes buttons, or just their initials, and you can match them to any decor. So if you know a person who is lamenting over finding anything to hang on their walls in a color they can't find, this would work well. Pinterest (and my boards) have lots of great ideas for buttons and you can buy them in variegated shades of the same color now, which is very good because I think saving buttons has fallen out of our collective memory. Which is a shame, in my book.
This is an anti-cellulite remedy and several more are involved if you hit the link and scroll down. This one will be for my friends who have been with me longest, through good times, bad times, cellulite, and the whole enchilada, so to speak. They know who they are and I am finding more all the time. Blogging is a great way to get to know people. I highly recommend it.
I can't get the pictures to load but if you hit the links you will see lots of good ideas and I believe you will want to go to Pinterest and get started immediately. It is a little addicting but every body's got something, and this is a benign addiction since it provides free advertising for any one's idea's or blog. Once you get your boards set up, you can practically go to sleep just pinning stuff. It's a boon to those of us who have big plans but small attention spans and bad memories and hectic schedules. I am describing myself here, so take no offense but if the shoe fits, wear it proudly. Pinterest will be able to simplify your life.
Last, but not least, check out these babies!
These are nothing more than empty spaghetti sauce or jelly jars cleaned up and made all fancy. You can keep stuff in them or paint them, or even decorate with beading that you can find at Walmart in the crafts section for little to nothing. One of these painted prettily plus a small string of lights or a battery powered candle and you have a great gift for very little actual money. If a bracelet breaks, save all the beads! This one has been a little uncomfortable for me, as I am now saving all my empty jars and running out of room....but it will be worth it! For the storage jars all you would really have to add would be a pretty knob at the top. Fill it with a scrub and you are good to go: two gifts in one.
I just pretend like
Nana and
Big Grandma are beside me, proudly glowing that I finally learned not to throw stuff away. Something tells me I should have learned this long ago, but I'm still glad I don't have a whole drawer full of rubber bands saved from the paper and pieces of tinfoil that I have carefully cleaned, folded, and "saved". In everything, moderation: this is my motto. ;)
I miss the days when they would lecture me about this and then tell me what it was like to wear the same dress, made from a flour sack, every day for a year because it was all they had. We would have had so much fun doing this together. There is nothing I can do about that now, but I am going to try to entice my kids home for a few "down days" around Thanksgiving with the promise that we can make gifts together and even eat some Vodka Cherries while we work. That, to the best of my knowledge, is how memories are made. If worse comes to worse, I will just breakout the Vodka Cherries, get them looped, insist that they can't drive, and pull out the empty jars, Epsom salts and essential oils and we will go from there. Not that I advocate manipulation as a rule, but every mother knows that it does work. We do what we have to do, and we are your MOTHER so suck it up and have another cherry, kid. We are going to make you a sugar scrub for $3.00 that you will love, in a pretty, reusable jar! Life does not really get better than this, I hate to be the one to tell you, and I know you won't believe me for another 25 years, but it's true. Trust your mama!
Here's to making memories, homemade gifts, and be prepared for Christmas. And Pinterest, naturally.
