A few extra Halloween links that will be pretty useless by next Sunday…

Scary places to visit on Halloween

Some more Halloween activities for kids

Spider cakes

A funny geeky last minute Halloween costume

Creative alternative ways to decorate your pumpkin

Spooky food recipes for your Halloween dinner or party

Easy, last minute costumes

Make your own candy corn. via Baking Bites

It’s National Candy Corn Day, so here are some more candy corn links.

Halloween safety links

More Halloween photography tips

More Halloween safety tips

Last-minute Halloween decorations

Have a happy and safe Halloween!

It’s not so much that I’ve been busy - I’ve just been occupied with other things. And also, now that I don’t have to post a picture every day on my photo blog, I seem to keep leaving pictures on the camera for days at a time before I download them. I’m okay with that, though. It’s nice to be able to procrastinate now and then.

Anway, here’s the latest crop of photos to illustrate what’s been going on in our little corner of the world… (Read on …)

Since the Holiday Season that never ends is upon us, I’m going to add a holiday section - at least for the next few months!

Everybody Needs Gadgets

It’s about time.

I don’t know if the cutesy kid’s dinnerware sets actually get the kids to eat healthier foods, but they are pretty cute. There’s still a lot to be said for the good old imagination, though!

For the Sudoku lovers.

Banana gadgets!

Herb ladder: attractive and functional.

What parts of your house hog the most electricity? Ask the electricity monitor.

Food! Glorious Food!

A cooking website where kids teach kids through video recipes.

Make your own pie spice mixes.

How to make chocolate-dipped spoons.

Create your own cookbook.

Make your own candy bars.

The 88 worst-for-you fast foods. I guess this would actually be not-so-glorious food.

I love chocolate, but ewww.

Creative Stuff

Make marbled paper with shaving cream.

Rock ‘n Roll quilt.

If you’re a cross stitcher, you can now buy patterns online and they will come straight to your email.

Speed up your busy camera.

A free drawing program for your kids.

Happy Holidays

All Sorts of Halloween goodness!

Non-sugar alternatives for Halloween treats.

How to safely carve a pumpkin.

Make an pumpkin tower with your house number on it.

Make your own (or your kid’s own) trick or treat bag.

Make an LED hat for Halloween, or any other holiday you can think of.

Pumpkin pie in a glass.

A fun alternative to carving pumpkins.

Lots of pumpkin and Halloween recipes.

In case you’re not quite sure or need some new ideas, here are a ton of links on how to carve a pumpkin.

Find a haunted house near you…or make your own.

Techno Geekery

Thinking about switching to a Mac from a PC, but not sure if it’s worth the hassle? Read this. And then come over to the dark side. ;)

An online calendar for your whole family.

Uncluttering your digital music collection.

No time for scrapbooking? Do it online!

Life Is a Highway

The cold weather is coming, so find a coat that flatters your figure.

We have to do several of these things during our summer monsoon season, but maybe you need to know how to prepare for a winter storm.

Some people do a sports stadium tour across the country, but with this list, you can do a Candy Destination Tour.

25 skills every man should know. (Personally I think making a list that “every man” should know is a bit sexist. There are a couple of things on the list my husband doesn’t know how to do, but I do, so perhaps it should be 25 skills that someone in your household should have.)

Burn more calories while you walk.

Give your pantry a makeover.

Decluttering strategies.

16 products and tools to clean everything in your house.

Figure out your forgotten combination lock in 12 seconds. Now if someone would just tell me how to open our safe, we’d be in business.

Good Ideas

No more stinky shoes!

15 uses for tea (besides drinking it).

Adopt a soldier.

Laughter Is the Best Medicine

This is more shaking my head than laughter, and yet another reason I rarely go to Wal-Mart.

Weekly Features

Pretty recipe of the week

Tip of the week

So now that LG is old enough to go trick or treating and actually get it, we’re trying to figure out what to do with her. See, here’s the problem. We don’t live in a neighborhood that is really conducive to trick or treating. It’s all acre (or more) lots without 1) street lights, 2) a good path to take to get to a lot of houses and 3) very many houses to go to anyway. Nobody trick or treats in our little neighborhood. We’ve lived here for 4 1/2 years and we’ve never had one single trick or treater in our little area.

We could take her to the neighborhoods a few blocks away, but we really don’t know the people who live in those neighborhoods, so I’m not really all that comfortable doing that.

The last two years, we just took her to her Grandma’s and a few friends houses and that was plenty, but now she’s old enough to do a little more and really enjoy it. So, I’m trying to figure out what to do that I feel comfortable with and she will enjoy.

We shall see. We shall see.

2:00 am The power goes out. I sleep through it. Mike didn’t, but chose not to do anything about it and went back to sleep.

4:30 am I wake up and realize the power is out. (I hate you APS.)

4:45 am After I find two flashlights that do not work (so that I can find the power company’s number) and get into a whisper fight with Mike over batteries (because he wants to sleep and I’m already mad he didn’t call the power company in the first place), I use the light of my cell phone as a flashlight and find the number. I call the number and go through a whole long ridiculous voice menu to report the power outage, having to look at the account number (with the phone I’m trying to use as a flashlight while pressing buttons whose lights keep going out) and start over again because I “did not enter the number in the time allotted” (I hate you APS), and finally get it reported. They (and by they, I mean the recorded voice) tell me to call back in two hours if the power is not back on yet.

5:30 am (ish) I finally get back to sleep.

6:30 am The power comes back on. I know this because the ceiling fan light came on as it always does when the power goes out because it’s on a remote control and therefore you have to leave the switch in the on position in order for the remote control to work. I fumble around for the remote control and finally get it turned back off.

6:40 am I start to drift off to sleep again.

6:45 am Little Girl wakes up and comes and climbs in bed with us, thereby destroying any chance I had of going back to sleep again.

I hate you APS.

I decided to revamp my whole link system and actually add a ton of links that I have in my feed reader, but not on my actual blog. I didn’t really want to take up a ton of space in my sidebar, so I made a separate page and then linked that in my sidebar. I did move some links from the sidebar to the new page, but I deleted nothing. So if you’re ever bored and want some new blogs to read, well check it out.

The links I left in my sidebar are people who actually comment on my blog, even if it’s only once in awhile (and/or people I know in real life). I figure they deserve a little something extra. ;) By the way, if you’re a regular commenter and I somehow managed to miss putting you on the blogroll (or I don’t have your link up to date), please leave a comment or drop me an email and I will correct that error posthaste!

Dear Mike,

It doesn’t do me a lot of good if all I can find the is the stand-up mixer, but not the attachments, or the attachments to the hand mixer but not the hand mixer itself. Doesn’t quite work. So next time when you put things away, please take that into consideration.

Thanks,
Your loving, but frustrated, wife

Edited to add: I finally found the attachments for the stand mixer in a drawer with the pyrex measuring cups. Because that makes perfect sense right? :P

As I mentioned yesterday, LG and I are learning about pumpkins this week, and so for a snack this morning we had a Banana Pumpkin Smoothie. You take 1 cup milk, 1 sliced up banana, 2 tablespoons of canned pumpkin and a pinch of cinnamon, throw it in the blender, mix it up and you have a yummy autumn-themed smoothie!

So I’ve been a little quiet since Thursday. Why? Well, Friday was my birthday, and even though I’m not exactly thrilled about getting older, I am thrilled about making it through another year and hanging out with my family. Which is what I did all weekend. So there.

Rather than write a whole long boring post about the weekend, I’ll (mostly) leave it to the pictures to tell you what my weekend was like… (Read on …)

Everybody Needs Gadgets

This tape dispenser makes me laugh.

A “smart” humidifier.

I doubt I would ever get these slippers for my kid because they are just a little bizarre, but hey, if you’re that into Star Wars…

If you want perfectly round cookies, then you need these cookie cutters.

A camera stand that fits in your purse.

Food! Glorious Food!

Chocolate cravings explained by science?

Creative Stuff

Links to help you learn how to bind your own books.

Improve your photos 60 seconds at a time.

Make your photos pop with color.

Fall photo tips.

Taking good pictures in bad weather.

Lots of fabulous links for Halloween.

Where to find the best deals on fabric.

Halloween photography tips.

All about shutter speed.

Techno Geekery

This is for anyone who has ever wanted to hug their computer.

Life Is a Highway

Really cool looking moths. Yes, moths. (If bugs make you squeamish, though, you might want to skip this one.)

If you’re an Ikea lover, this blog is for you.

55 movies to see in 2008.

Tips to help you enjoy exercising.

Keep a wish list to help you curb impulse buys.

The safer toy guide.

Stop worrying and enjoy Halloween. Your kids are probably safe.

27 free games that might just keep your kids entertained the next time you go on a road trip.

Ever heard of a retronym? Well, now you have.

Good Ideas

21 ways to remove crayon from walls.

Did you know you have to re-register on the do not call list every five years?

You’ve probably seen the commercials. Now here’s the website. Parents. The anti-drug.

Laughter Is the Best Medicine

Cat bowling!

Too Much Time on My Hands

Build your own wild self.

Weekly Features

Pretty recipe of the week

Pretty recipe of the week 2

Tip of the week

You can learn a lot about yourself, and what kind of parent you are, just by watching your child play. This morning, LG is playing with three rabbits. The one in the dress is “Mommy”, the tiny one is the “baby” and the other big one is “Daddy”.

The words the bunnies are “saying” are things like “I love you most in the whole wide world” and “you’re so cute”. Nothing negative. Nothing angry. Then the mommy and daddy rabbit dance together. Then the mommy and the baby dance together.

It’s all positive and happy and loving. I think that must mean that, in general, our conversations with her, and about her, are positive and loving. Obviously, we have to get after her now and then, and she doesn’t like it too much, but it doesn’t seem to stick with her too long.

Watching your child at play is a great learning experience. Sometimes you might learn things that don’t make you feel too good, but hopefully, you’ll just see the happiness that you try to surround your child with demonstrated in her pretend play.

Since LG went into her toddler bed, she’s slept with a baby gate in the doorway so I could get some sleep instead of waking up at every little sound wondering if she was wandering the house in the middle of the night.

But a few days ago, I asked her if she wanted the gate up or down during her naptime. She opted for no gate, and I told her she could have it that way as long as she stayed in bed and took her nap. Which she did. And when she woke up a couple of hours later, she calmly walked into my room to find me.

The gate continued to go up at night, though, until last night, when she told her father that she didn’t want the gate up. And of course he gave in and left it down. Darn him. But actually, she did really well. She stayed in bed until about 6 am, when she got out of bed and woke her dad up (it was a bad snoring night so he was on the couch…lol!) saying that she had an owie on her foot. He put a band-aid on it and she went back to bed and back to sleep for another hour or two. But, other than that, she stayed in her room in her bed.

So, I guess the time has come for the gate to come down for good. (Well, except maybe for time outs when necessary.) As long as she stays in her room and sleeps and doesn’t wander the house at night, I guess she’s earned the right to that small bit of freedom, and since she’ll be potty training very very soon (and that’s another post for another day), it’s becoming necessary anyway. On the plus side, it means I don’t have to get out of bed to open it when she wants to get up. I like that part. ;)

Well, it was a jam-packed weekend and there are lots of pictures so please click (Read on …)

We are back. I am most pleased to be back with my internet again. It’s not that I can’t live without it, but since Mike was gigging at night, it’s awfully boring to sit in a hotel room with a sleeping toddler and not be able to even watch anything interesting on television because LG was in the same room with me. So, I missed the internet greatly. I do have internet on my phone, but I can only do so much.

Anyway, we are back, although the future neighbor’s vacant house has the alarm going off and we have no way to contact them, so that’s just lovely. I don’t know what’s worse - an alarm going off with no end in sight or a really loud motorcycle in the hotel parking lot at all hours of the night (so loud that it set off someone’s car alarm). Yay.

Anyway, I’ll have pics and the story up as soon as I can - we did actually have a pretty nice time internet or not!

Everybody Needs Gadgets

I doubt I will ever buy this Monopoly game version, but it’s kind of cool. If you’re into pink.

Collapsible silicone colanders. Awesome.

Food! Glorious Food!

43 cake baking tips and tricks.

Count calories online.

How to cut a pumpkin for cooking.

Creative Stuff

Too cute pom pom pumpkins.

Another tip on landscape photography.

Techno Geekery

Still have cassettes and vinyl records around that you’d like to have on your iPod? Here’s how to digitize them.

Don’t have time to scan all those old pictures? Let someone else do it for you.

Make your own favicon (that little symbol on the address bar in your browser).

If you hate trying to send mail via the postal service, try sending smail mail via email!

Life Is a Highway

Stretch for energy.

15 really cool ways to tie your sneakers.

Find out how many days are left until Christmas. via Sense and Serenity

7 tips for writing exam essays.

How to spot fake listings on Craigslist and eBay.

If you don’t have a husband like mine, then you might need a little help buying lumber for a do-it-yourself project.

Good Ideas

A green way to leave info for the babysitter.

10 uses for old beach towels.

Laughter Is the Best Medicine

Whether you are a bird lover or not, this is pretty funny.

Too Much Time on My Hands

Carve a virtual pumpkin.

Weekly Features

Pretty recipe of the week

Tip of the week

(I always sucked at science…lol)