Library book sale!

Took a little money and spent a little time at the Better Books Sale at our local library, and came home happy. I'm the new owner of:

- Angie Debo's Prairie City: The Story of an American Community
- Bill Bryson's Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
- The Library of America's The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence
- Margaret Musgrove's The Student's Ovid, Selections from the Metamorphoses
- Churchill's The Birth of Britain (A History of the English Speaking People)
- Lial's Intermediate Algebra: with Early Functions and Graphing (2002)

All in excellent condition. The Library of America volume will go next to my two-volume LoA set of Lincoln's writings. Ovid will keep company with the study volume of The Aeneid. Churchill goes into the European history shelf (or two or however many). Lial's algebra needs a good looking through to see how it compares to what Son1 has studied this year, and then will head to either the reference shelf or the in-the-future shelf. Prairie City goes with western/Oklahoma books. Bryson's American English book might slide in next to the book on the origins of nursery rhymes.

It's so very, very nice to have added four bookcases recently.

Summertime realities

I'm not telling the kids our summer break has two-thirds left; I don't want to face the crushed reactions. For all of us, the first month flew by. Now I need to buckle down before the rest of the summer gets away from me.

An essential: a wish list of activities brainstormed by the boys and me (we'll reap the benefit for many months, actually).

Also, we must get back to the morning structure so the house doesn't fill with clutter and undone chores and so our afternoons feel extravagantly free in comparison.

It's time to provide short stacks of very good books for each boy's "mom's reading list" reading time. Son2 just read The Wind in the Willows, hurrah!, and that's the kind of thing I have in mind.

Gotta tackle the short list of labor-required house and yard projects, maybe one per week/weekend, with all able bodies.

And it's time for me to enforce personal "screen time" restrictions similar to what the boys have. I want to do more thinking, reading, knitting, and getting things done, and this has been a hindrance. (eek!)

So, bye -- I'm going to go knit some of my Vortex 5 dishcloth for a while! (or try this Vortex link)

Taming the Inbox Paper

Info I'm gonna use to set up my incoming paperwork system, and tweak for my homeschooling paper handling.

Look down the page at
Maintaining Your Filing System

Way down the page, past all the sales pitch, see Here's How 'My Oh-So-Organized filing System' helps keep you organized

Halfway down the page, see the No-Fail Paper Solution

Visual organization idea -- so cool! Stay Organized with Binder Clips

Discussion of Thinking and Paper, on Edward Tufte's site

Taming Kitchen Clutter, on the Pendaflex site

Strategies 32 - Active Paperwork, and 41 - Multiple Projects in Process, courtesy of Smead

Garlands, who'd a thunk it?

Who would've thought that I'd be captivated, charmed by these?! Somehow I stumbled across a Flickr group focused on photos of handcrafted garlands. ALL KINDS of garlands. Love it!

Flickr: The Ga-ga for Garlands Pool

(Tip: browse with the full-screen slideshow -- very nice)

Freeze Yer Buns 2008 challenge

As soon as I realized Crunchy Chicken had launched the Freeze Yer Buns 2008 challenge, I knew I had to join! (Ask my husband and kids!)

Copenhagen Cycle Chic

How very fun! Dressing normally, nay, with style! and bicycling wherever you need to go. Yay Copenhagen and contributors from elsewhere!

Copenhagen Cycle Chic - Streetstyle and Bike Advocacy in High Heels

Pad Thai and jasmine rice

Last night, thanks to some clearance'd items I picked up at the grocery store a while back, we learned that the whole family likes Pad Thai and jasmine rice. Yay! No need for a Pad Thai boxed kit next time; I'll pick up some rice noodles and either buy or make the sauce.

Yet again, I am reminded that all of us like various Asian dishes. Yum!

By the way, thanks to my now-daily habit of stopping by Facebook, my too-busy-to-blog mindset seems to have faded away. We'll see :)