I like to dance!

E’s loves to watch the Nick Jr. show “Yo Yo Gabba!” As kids’ shows go it’s pretty good. It emphasizes moving around to music and they have a lot of good bands on the show.

One of the reoccurring segments features kids exclaiming “My name is ___, and I like to dance!” and then boogieing down in front of a green screen. As you can imagine, some of the dances are pretty awesome.

The show “The Soup” has been featuring some of the dance segments and the exposure has let to people creating remix videos like this one.

Sensibly Styled

Wearing modest clothes is important to me. I’m more comfortable when my clothes aren’t too short/too tight/too low cut. But sometimes it’s hard to find modest clothes that are also stylish and cute. I want to feel comfortable in my clothes but I don’t want to look frumpy.

That’s why I’ve been grooving on the blog Sensibly Styled lately. They highlight cute clothes from all sorts of different stores. And sometimes readers ask for help putting together outfits and it’s interesting to see what the Sensibly Styled girls come up with. It’s fun and encouraging to see that there are so many options out there.

Dave Barry and Wax Seal Pendants

Ever since I was a kid I’ve been charmed by nice stationary and fountain pens and various writing accouterments. There’s a certain romance about them that I’m still a sucker for. I liked to write pen pals and loved getting mail in return.

In seventh grade I took a typing class and during our free practice time I would type up these long letters to Dave Barry. Yep, I was a big Dave Barry fan as a kid and had a bit of a crush on him (Nerd!). I would carefully fold these letters and seal them with sealing wax, stamping them with an seal I had with an F on it and mail them off.

After having sent off several letters with no response I wrote Dave and asked him what was up (I guess I had a pretty healthy sense of entitlement as a twelve year-old.) I got a post card from him explaining that he had people open his mail for him and because my letters contained some sort of weird crumbly stuff (the sealing wax apparently fell apart in transit) his staff had been throwing them away (apparently he gets a lot of weird mail). After that I wrote him a couple more times and received a few more postcards back which was fun.

I had pretty much forgotten about my brief correspondence with Dave Barry but lately a few things have reminded me of it: reading this account of a girl being pen pals with John Hughes and seeing these wax seal pendents on Etsy.

These pendents are made out of silver using wax impressions from an hand-stamped seal. I think they’re a nice variation on the initial necklaces that are kind of popular right now.

I think I like the first and second pendants the best, but I can’t decide if the first one is too ren-faire or not. What do you think?

Dine-and-Dash Update

The perpetrator moments before the crime.

Sadly, the dine-and-dash incident from last week did not have a satisfying conclusion. I showed up at the office armed with baked treats and cash to give the person who picked up my bill. But the friend I talked to said that it would be hard to pay back because everyone just passed cash to one person to settle the bill and when the person announced that they were a bit short everyone contributed a little more to make up the difference. There were over 20 people there and so everyone ended up chipping in 40 cents or so to cover my bill. My friend said that no one had realized what was going on and that it wasn’t a big deal.

Going cube-to-cube and explaining the whole thing and then giving everyone 40 cents wasn’t really a feasible option; I didn’t have enough change, I didn’t have time before my meeting, and it would have been extremely awkward for everyone. But I still felt sick with embarrassment over the whole thing. So instead I handed out cookies to everyone I saw that had been there and vowed to chip in extra the next time. *Sigh* The whole thing was pretty lame.

Two embarrassing and unfortunate incidents

I gave E a bath yesterday morning. He’s still crazy about baths and usually cries when it’s time to get out. It’s hard to dry him off and get him dressed if we’re still in the bathroom because he wiggles out of my hands and tries to climb back into the sink (yep, he still fits in our huge laundry sink). So yesterday I wrapped my shrieking child in a towel and went into the family room. I set him down and picked up a diaper. He abruptly stopped crying and a split second later the silence was broken by the sound of a stream of fluid hitting something. It turned out to be my couch.

At first I thought he did it because he was mad about the bath ending but now I think it was actually just a reflex from the change in temperature between the rooms. Spiteful toddler mastermind or innocent victim of biology? I guess we’ll never know.

The other incident yesterday was entirely my fault. I took E to a farewell lunch my office was having for a coworker a local Chinese restaurant. It was during E’s normal nap time but he held himself together admirably. When it was time to leave I headed to the front counter to pay for our lunches but on the way there some people at the table pulled us aside to say hi and dote on E. My former boss wanted to chat about something so she said she would walk us to our car. We started chatting and walked outside and I got in my car and drove away–without paying for lunch.

Yep, I pulled a dine-and-dash.

I didn’t realize anything until I was emptying my pockets before bed last night and found the cash I was going to use for lunch. I am SO embarrassed. There were about twenty people in our party and so I think that someone probably ended up picking up our tab. I’m going into the office later today for a meeting and I’m going to ask around and see if who picked it up. On the way in I’m going to stop by a bakery and buy a cupcake to give them along with the cash I owe. They probably thought I was super rude for blithely leaving with picking up the tab for myself AND E. I’m so embarrassed.

Anyway, I hope you have a nice weekend. And if you go out to eat remember to pay your bill!

Olympic Game Farm

I realized today that I hadn’t posted any pictures from our trip to the Olympic Game Farm in Sequim, WA yet. It was one of the highlights of our time on the peninsula. Basically, you drive through the farm and throw bread to animals like bears (behind electric fences) and buffalo, zebras, deer, elk, and llamas (not behind fences and free to come up to your car and eat out of your hand).

The guy running the farm the night we were there was super nice. We didn’t know what time it closed and actually arrived 30 minutes too late. But he saw how crestfallen we were and let us in anyway (yay!).

The sun was setting as we drove through and the way the light hit the grass behind this bear was incredible. Everything was glowing.

A lot of the bears are rescued from circuses and some of them appear in movies and tv shows. They’re trained and will sit up and beg for bread. It’s pretty crazy to see such a huge animal sit up on your cue.

There was a herd of white deer there. This fawn was adorable.

The buffalo came right up to the car which was a little intimidating. They licked the windows with their huge tongues. If your window was down too far they would try and stick their heads in the car…

…like this elk.

A peacock was very obliging and showed off for us.

This zebra came up and ate from my hand.

If you’re ever on the Olympic peninsula I would recommend stopping by, especially if you have kids with you. E was actually pretty tired and fell asleep as we drove through but my nephews (ages 9 and 7) loved it. The only thing you’re allowed to feed the animals is bread. You can buy it there or pick up cheap bread at a grocery store and bring your own.

The best fifty cents I’ve spent in a while

Before we had E, I was seldom up and about on Saturdays until after the garage sales were over (sleeping in, how I miss you!). But this summer I realized that since E and I are already up pretty early on Saturdays we might as well hit a sale or two.

These are two of my favorite finds of the summer. Both were a bargain at a quarter a piece. E especially likes the phone and will talk to himself on it as we’re driving around. His conversations usually go something like, “..lo? Um, (nonsensical babbling)…Um, (nonsensical babbling)…” It cracks us up.


I’ll follow the sun

After I discovered that my Holga’s shutter was set on bulb instead of normal I switched it back to normal and took a couple shots of these sunflowers. They’re nothing special but I was just happy to see that they turned out clear. Yay for cameras not being broken!


I just bought a shutter release and some b&w filters for my Holga that I’m eager to try out along with some filters N came me for a gift. It’s been so long since I’ve worked with film (basically since high school) that I had forgotten how much I enjoy it. I’m falling in love with photography all over again.

Double feature weekend, woot woot!

On Saturday N and I blew off our yard work, housecleaning, and parenting duties and went to a double feature of Ponyo and District 9. It was great.

For me, going to a double feature instantly turns a normal Saturday into a holiday. I didn’t know N when I was in high school (which actually would have been kind of creepy since he’s 4 years older than me) but blowing everything off and going to the movies for 6 hours feels like we’re skipping class together. (Not that I skipped my classes a lot, Mom! Ahem.) But it’s a nice little break to take once or twice a year. And in between shows we had a tasty dinner of BBQ wings, so the day was several kinds of awesome.

The movies couldn’t have been more different from each other but I really liked both of them. (While writing this post I’ve realized that while I really enjoy watching and talking about movies, I sometimes don’t like writing about them. Kind of weird, but there you go.) If you’re interested in N’s take on the movies we saw check out his blog over the next few days.

If you’re thinking about catching Ponyo in the theater I would go fairly soon. Our opening weekend mid-afternoon show was only half full; I don’t know how long it will be in theaters. And the movie’s good enough that it deserves to be seen on the big screen.