Paper Culture

Running short on time, so I will add the "definitely not our family Christmas card picture" later today. In the mean time, here's a code for Paper Culture's awesome cards.

code: FF30
30% for today and tomorrow (Wednesday/Thursday)
Valid until 11:59 PM PST on Thursday 12/1

Mommy Gorilla

San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Wow.

Every Household Needs One

What sort of contraption is this?

A Family Dryer, of course!

Intended for waterparks, but I can think of many uses . . .

Helpful Arms

Squids that hold shampoo bottles in their helpful tentacles. (Thanks, Mayberry.)

An octopus coathook (or as seen in the November issue of InStyle, a hairdryer holder.)

Giant Lego Octopus Bands, courtesy of LegoLand.

And best of all, Scientific American now has an all-octopus, all-the-time blog! The most recent post features video of an octopus popping out of the water and scrambling across land.

~
Happy Thanksgiving!

No Naaaaaap

I don't need a nap! I totally don't! I'm just a little floppy, that's all. And giggly!

New Skills

Lucky boys, with all their grandparents' attention!

Star Wars Round-up

Most of these come from Think Geek, but this first most excellent tool for enabling your children to whack each other in the head is from the Japanese cell phone accessory store.

Lightsaber umbrellas!

Lightsaber candlesticks, of course.

Jedi bathrobes.

Death Star Trash Compactor bookends!

Really, this one is too much. Han-Solo-in-carbonite ice cube molds!

Better Late Than Never

Pumpkin cuteness!

Prizes, Me Hearties!

I brought some treats back for the boys from that East Coast trip, which is much easier when you can shop in Times Square than when struggling with the prices in Scandinavia.

Some Cars 2 books for Buster. He was delighted.

A pirate set for Q-ster, including a telescope, a map, and a ring.


He loved the telescope, but declared that the map was insufficiently accurate. I told him to draw his own.

And he did.

The Beautiful Life

Last month I was traveling on the East Coast (the trip that was postponed from the hurricane) and I had the pleasure of staying a night at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston.

It was built in 1912, but it has the feeling of something earlier, maybe Belle Epoque. I'd love to have a costume ball there and sweep down the grand hall in a gown with a train (to be pinned up for dancing, of course.)

Even the courtesy phones in the hallways had charm. Note that this is a push button phone, even though the numbers are arranged in a rotary-styled circle.

My room was big enough for a party, even though I didn't do more than work on my computer and call room service. And huge props to the waiter who brought me my dinner. As he put it on my desk, he said, "The service is included," before I could fumble for a tip, and let me know to call for them to retrieve the (enormously heavy) silver tray.

Sundown of an Earlier Sort

Remember that picture of the clock tower by the fjord in June, with the sun still shining at 10pm?

Same clock tower at 4pm yesterday - yep, sunset.

A few key findings on the weather here in Scandinavia.
1) I love my new coat (rated for 20 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit!)
2) The gloves are very effective.
3) Metal earrings are not a good idea.

Glove Tech

Since I'm headed to cold parts of the world this month, it was time to get some real gloves, not the little decorative things I wear in California. I had no idea that gloves have become so technical. Check this out:

Omni-heat thermally reflective material.


Gloves for "extreme" activities or for "people who are cold handed." What above both?


These might suit, given where I'm going.


These have conductive material in the smartphone-typing fingers, so that you don't get cold when you need to communicate.

One of my cold-weather colleagues told me that folks answer their iPhones with their noses so that they don't have to take their gloves off. Hee-hee!

I ended up buying some Polartec Wind Pro gloves - lightweight and supposedly very effective. I hope they work as advertised!

When You Give A Boy A Cupcake

There were a few dozen highly frosted cupcakes leftover from a reception at work this afternoon, so I brought a pair home for the boys.

I was so pleased when I found some cardboard soup containers that were just the right size to keep them from getting squashed.

Of course, getting them out was a little harder. Fortunately, we have SwingDaddy to help.

Excited child #1.

Child 2 is so excited that he is bouncing even before the sugar hits.

"Mommy, why didn't you bring four cupcakes home so that you and Daddy could have one too?" (Read, why didn't you bring four cupcakes home so that we could "share" yours too.)

Squirmy Worm

We had a family photo shoot on Monday afternoon and the photographer mailed us a CD of the images today. He took the photos for our wedding and the images I used for our Christmas cards after each baby was born - I love his work.

The CD included 655 digital images (the film ones will arrive later), of which approximately 640 include Buster impersonating a noodle. Squirm, flop, giggle. The remaining pictures are spectacular and are totally worth the time, effort, and fee it took to make them happen. Now I need to decide to choose one for our Christmas card!

P.S. Must see Stimey's photo post today. I think her Quinn tops the list for memorable pix.

My Boys

Part Two

To follow up a few of last week’s posts:

My parents toasted the seeds from their pumpkin and we noticed that I didn’t record the oven temperature either. To quote the Bloggess, “well done, me!” 250 degrees, by the way.

And here are some pictures of Buster illustrating just how much he enjoys his footie pajamas.”They are soft! They keep me warm!”

My Baby's Back

It's gotten cold at night (by California standards) so I pulled out the footie pajamas for Buster. Footie pajamas! I couldn't stop hugging him - seeing him all zipped up was like seeing him as a baby again.

The micro dude, exactly three years ago.

The World's Worst Food Blogger

With Halloweens and the carving of pumpkins comes pumpkin seeds, and the opportunity to do something with them. The boys were pretty excited about toasting seeds, so I got prepared.

Look, an indistinct picture of some damp seeds, just de-gooped, and some of the tools/ingredients that I intend to use, and some other random stuff.

And here's a blurry picture of the seeds in a bowl. Which may or may not already have the olive oil in it to coat the seeds. Followed by no picture of the garlic salt or the regular salt, or of the finished (delicious) seeds because we ate them all.

Yeah, it's a pretty good thing I'm not trying the food blogging gig.

Paper Culture Cards: Eco-Friendly and Full of Cute Sea Creatures!

One of my new favorite vendors from BlogHer '11 back in August: Paper Culture. I've been quite pleased with Tiny Prints, but I adore the greeting card and invitation designs at Paper Culture - the shapes, clean images, paper quality, cuteness. They have quite the green philosophy (100% post-consumer recycled paper, plant a tree for every order, only package in recycled paper, etc) but I'll admit that it's the cuteness that gets me.



They had these wonderful wall hangings, and I came back to booth a couple of times to admire.


Did you notice the jellyfish and octopus! How could I not love them?

By dint of being somewhat more crazy than any other blogger ("I have an entire category of my blog devoted to cute sea creatures, I really do!",) the CEO and press director kindly chose me to receive the sea life wall hanging when they packed up the booth and distributed all the decorations. Thank you, thank you!

Here it is:



Look, jellyfish!



Disclaimer: I was not paid for this post and the opinions are my own (obviously, I mean, who else on this planet is that crazy about octopi?) Paper Culture gave the wall hanging pictured above with Buster. I plan to order (and pay for) my Christmas cards from them this year.