| Have you seen them? The scary stories and emails that are floating around about an impending ban on childrens books and other childrens products (intended for ages 12 and younger) hidden in the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (specfically section 101) passed last year? You know, the ones where thrift stores and even families that resell used childrens items, including books and clothing, would be unable to do so without spending hundreds of dollars per item sold (even for existing inventory) to laboratory certify compliance with the new law, thus putting them out of business? I have. But fear not! Today the regulators have laid that to rest. Resellers and thrift stores will not be impacted. Well, that's not totally true. They do need to be "up" on what has been recalled due to lead and are responsible to not sell those items. They are still liable if they sell something that is non-compliant - but that is a far cry from being required to test each and every item that comes into their stores, including existing inventory, at an expense of hundreds of dollars per item. Not to mention all us homeschoolers and other frugal families that sell our used-but-usable curriculum and outgrown childrens items, or donate them to a charity for the tax writeoff at the end of the year ~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
If you craft items for sale that are for the 12 and younger set, you may want to contact your state congresspersons and the CPSC to find out how the law impacts you and what can be done to enact a change if the testing requirements will be cumbersome to your business. I imagine lots of home businesses will be impacted by this, even if resellers will not. Here is the full text of the act (H.R. 4040). |
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| I don't know about you, but I'd sure like to! Have you met Molly Green yet? She’s The Old Schoolhouse’s new freebie finder and has a great website called www.econobusters.com. Starting this month, Molly is releasing a new e-book full of money-saving ideas every month called Molly’s Money Saving Digest. The inaugural title (available now) is Let’s Get Organized for Fiscal Fitness. Topics include: Breadmaking for Beginners:Check out Molly's Econobusters blog, and you can click the link in this post or the "Molly's Money Saving Digest" button in my right sidebar to see how to get your hands on her monthly e-books. You can also follow Molly via Twitter, if you like, at www.twitter.com/Molly_Green. ~ |
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| New Year, New Look... I hope you like it. I've been wanting a 3-column blog for a long time and after a lot of research and trial and error (believe me, I am NOT a web designer by any stretch of even the most active imagination), I finally ended up with something I'm happy with. So, leave me a comment and let me know if you like it. I don't really have any New Year's resolutions, but I do have a short list of things I'd "like" to see happen this year (in no particular order): *Get my clutter under control. With my husband's help over the break, we've started on this, but need momentum to continue to carry us through.So that's it! I told you it was short! What is on your list? ~ . |
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| Thank you to those who saw my post about Stellan's RSV and said a prayer. His status looks to be improving quite well. Visit MckMama's blog and her Twitter for updates. The hospital they are at does not allow posts to Blogger, so the most current stuff is coming over Twitter. If you don't have a Twitter account, you can click her blog and look in the left sidebar where her "tweets" are updated automatically via Twitter. |
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| Please read at MckMama's blog for the details. Stellan is the baby that should have been stillborn earlier this year. He was born perfectly normal and is now about 8 weeks old, give or take. He has been diagnosed with RSV today and is having great difficulty getting enough oxygen tonight. Please say a prayer for Stellan tonight. |
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| Well, Not Me! Monday is on hiatus, for Christmas mostly... but please also check MckMama's blog as Stellan is again in life-and-death need of prayer tonight. So, instead of telling you what I did not do last week, let me regale you with our adventure to the mountains of Southern California over the weekend. Last week we had a "winter storm", which in the lowlands where we are means rain and cold blustery weather. In the mountains it can mean snow, which the skiers enjoy. So, the day after the rain cleared out we headed out with our limited winter gear (remember, we live in the so-called land of perpetual sunshine... so unless you ski it can be hard to find really good winter wear at a price you want to pay for one or two uses before the kids grow out of it). We have winter coats, snow pants, knit hats, mittens, and snow boots for the big boys... and some waterproof pants (rain pants?) and a winter coat and mittens that sort of fit the little guy. We drove up near Wrightwood (a very popular ski area) to find a place for the kids to play in the snow. It was 22 degrees when we parked (!)  After getting everyone bundled and out of the car, the big boys played in the snow-covered ice (it was really icy underneath)     (I will come back and add some video clips, but they are taking forever to upload right now for some reason) Everyone had a good time for a little bit, but we are in Southern California, supposed land of perpetual sunshine... not the Frigid North... so we aren't used to those very cold temperatures, and we don't grow four year olds that can play for long stretches out in them. As we were getting back into the car, I looked at my four year old and said "Did you hit your cheek on something?" It really did look like he hit his face on something really hard... it was all pale and ringed with blue like the beginning of a pretty large and gnarly goose-egg bruise. My husband looked and said, "he has frostbite!" Of course, that freaked me out. All I can see in my mind when someone says "frostbite" is blackened fingers and toes that eventually get amputated (I've watched too many Discovery Channel shows about scaling K2 or Mount Everest or trekking to the Pole, I guess). All I could think was "Great! We go out for a few minutes to play in the snow and now my child is going to be scarred for life... on his face!" Thank goodness my homemade chenille scarf was just the thing and it seems he had only frost-nip, which is the very early but reversible stage of frostbite. We came out of the cold and caught it just in time. This picture was taken after about 20 minutes of warming up the skin under the scarf (No rubbing! Just hold it there, OK?) See how it looks like a bruise?   So, there you have our adventure in the snow!
~ . |
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I finally got the Christmas tree up, and even managed a few decorations. Ribbon, poinsettia garland, some jingle bell ornaments, and a few other things. Take a look: The glare at the top is from our large windows in the second story of the volume ceiling. I took these pictures with my cellphone, which has little to no white-balance, so please bear with me.
Here is the sign that is placed right at kid-eye-height:  I also managed to wrap most of the gifts, until I ran out of tape. I only have a few left to manage that are "traveling" gifts, those that go to people outside our household when we visit over the next couple days. And the one that my 18 month old decided to open early. It was really funny. I was getting ready to fix dinner last night and my 4 yr old comes into the kitchen bearing a plain white box. "Merry Christmas, Mommy!" I noticed that the box had a little "D" marked on the corner, denoting that it was one of the kid's gifts. "Where did you get that box!?", I exclaimed. "It's for you, Mommy! It's shirts!" I had gotten each of the boys a Transformer t-shirt and an Iron Man t-shirt as one of their gifts. "Who opened this? Did you open this?", I asked. My adorable 4 yr old answers with wide brown eyes, "Nooooo, Mommy. M did it (points to his 18 month old brother who is just now running into the kitchen smiling with unbridled glee and grabbing for the box)." So, I have one more gift to (re)wrap than I would have, but all is not lost. The child the gift belongs to did not see it, and the 4 year old doesn't have a clue that it was for one of them. In other news, apparently Edna Mode was right about capes (click here to pause my music player and then scroll back up here before playing YouTube): In case you don't have a couple minutes to watch the whole thing, Mr. Incredible decides he wants a cape on his new and improved supersuit. Edna, supersuit designer extrordinaire replies with an emphatic, "No capes!" and launches into a litany of cape accidents suffered by other supers. Well, evidently Superman did not get the message. I was looking for something in the boys' room and found him like this:   Just a little pre-Christmas fun, from my house to yours. ~ . |
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 Can you believe it's already Monday AGAIN??? That can mean only one thing... it's time for Not Me! Monday hostessed by MckMama. They say that time goes faster as you get older. I am NOT getting older, so that can't be why it's already Monday again. Also on Wednesday, I did not go to the "gated part of town" after school to pick up stuff from one of the gals in charge of Cub Scouts with sugary gosh-knows-what drool marks on the left shoulder of my shirt. That gosh-knows-what did not come from the sugary thing that my 18 month old somehow obtained during our first-grade Christmas party. It did not get on my shirt as I carried said 18 month old to the car as it poured down rain and all four of us (me and the three boys) tried to huddle under one umbrella. Nope, I did not go to someone's door in the super-expensive part of town with "stuff" on my shirt and try to cover it by nonchalantly flipping my hair over the area and hoping that she wouldn't notice. No, that wasn't me. I am not one of those people who wait until the last minute to finish up the Christmas shopping, decorating, etc, etc, etc. I do not have loose ends to tie up in the next two days. I did not go a whole week without blogging anything else simply because it's been a bit busy around here. See above paragraph. I am not finally going to get the tree up this morning. It's been up for weeks, right there between the couch and the fireplace. What? You don't see it there? Are you blind? How could you miss that beautiful specimen of high-end-department-store-esque decor? With the floaty gauze ribbons and the lights and the ornaments? It's been there since Thanksgiving... well, at least in my mind (wink). Find out what hundreds of other bloggers absolutely did not do last week by visiting MckMama's blog. If you wish to participate the rules are posted here. Give it a whirl! It's fun and way cheaper than therapy. ~ . |
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Well, it's late on Monday (if you can call 3:30pm late), and I did not almost forget to write my Not Me! Monday. I did not almost begin writing this post at the same time I nearly forgot I had to pick up my son at the coop. (We really did make it on time, just barely! And I really did almost forget that I needed to pick him up!)So now we are home and I am just now getting to my Not Me! post of the week after doing all this. My brain is not in such a tizzy with all the this-and-that to remember lately, that I feel like I'm constantly forgetting "something".So, that's the end of my therapy session for the week. To get yourself some more free therapy, visit MckMama's blog and see what she and a few hundred other folks didn't do this week either. Its lots of fun and cheaper than therapy. If you wish to participate, see the rules posted on MckMama's blog. ~ . |
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| I love when it rains. Unfortunately, we have not had a good rain in Southern California for years. And our favorite weekend place to go looks like a winter wonderland (there was not a lick of snow there yesterday before dark fell). I hope it stays snowy and doesn't rain up there and make it icky before the weekend. I know we'll probably put the chains on the van and go to play in the white stuff over the weekend if it stays. Today, according to my personal weather station, we have had 1.42 inches of rain since midnight (it's about 2pm now). It was coming down really good all morning and has just tailed off to drizzly showers in the last hour or so. It's about 53 degrees, which is chilly for Southern California (I know, that's a downright balmy temperature for a lot of the country this time of year, but we are spoiled). Tonight is the Christmas program at the coop. So, needless to say, my day has been chock full of running around to be ready for that. Things like: checking the hand-me downs to make sure everyone has a nice outfit to wear, locating all the dress shoes and making sure they are also in the right sizes for everyone's feet and have shoelaces (hand-me downs also), getting a new outfit for the oldest, making sure we have a hot dinner that isn't too much hassle so we can all eat and make a mad dash out the door when daddy gets home. So, this morning (after dropping off my oldest for coop class) I prepped hamburger stroganoff and put it in the crockpot (boy does the house smell yummy right now), ran out to pay some bills, stopped by the Burlington Coat Factory to get an outfit for the oldest, and to the grocery to get some odds and ends we needed. This afternoon I have to: pick up the oldest, take a shower (the rain and bluster is nice, but not so nice to your hair), and get everyone dressed and fed (or rather fed then dressed, so the clothes stay nice and no one wears their dinner to the program), and be ready to go by 6pm. Whew! Necessity makes for a productive day! I don't think I have accomplished this much in one day in some time. But it feels good. ~ |
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