I Have Returned

Actually, I got home on Wednesday. But I've spent the last couple days recovering from the trip and from a cold, and trying to get back in the groove of Real Life.

I did have a lovely time, except for getting a cold from Daniel. I spent lots of time with family and friends, and bought some awesome yarn I will likely blog about later. And I even made a couple sales from my shop despite being gone and not doing much of anything with it for two weeks. Yay!

I'm also nearly finished reading Brisingr, so look for a review of that soon.

Ahh, Vacation!

In case you're wondering, I'm on vacation at my parents' house right now, so I may not post much for the next couple of weeks. I'm busy enjoying the NC sun and catching up with my family and friends, so my shop and blog are kind of on vacation too for a bit. I'll be heading home the 22nd, so look for me to get busier after that :-)

Spam Reubens

I think Spam gets kind of a bad rap sometimes -- if you prepare it well, it can be really tasty! Here's one of our favorite recipes, which also happens to be the easiest (and cheapest) way I've found to make Reuben sandwiches.


Spam Reubens

Ingredients

1 can Spam -- sliced
1 loaf Pumpernickel -- sliced
1 can sauerkraut
1 lb. block Swiss cheese -- slice as many slices as you have Spam slices
Butter

Preparation

Heat sauerkraut in a small kettle. Fry spam on a griddle, adding a little butter if necessary. Butter two pieces of bread for every slice of spam. Layer ingredients on bread and fry as though it were grilled cheese.

Featured on 88Links

The 88Links blog has a regular feature called Ten Dollar Tuesday, and this week, they're including one of my Instant Canteens! I've gotten a lot of good responses to these, and have sold and traded quite a few. With the weather getting hotter, they're such a great way to carry your water bottle hands-free, like if you're out walking or running, or taking the kids on an excursion. I use mine almost every day when I take Daniel to the playground.

"The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner

I got about 120 pages into this book, then realized that for three days running, I'd chosen to reed Potty Training in Less Than a Day rather than Faulkner because the potty training book was more interesting. So I quit reading Faulkner. Because I have very little time to read right now, and I'm not going to waste it on something I'm not enjoying or learning from.

I'm not a big fan of stream-of-consciousness. Virginia Woolf gives me a headache. This didn't quite go that far, as it's not entirely stream-of-consciousness... but it's also told all out of order, which also annoys me. Sometimes it can work to tell a story in circles -- think Catch-22 by Joseph Heller -- and sometimes it seems to serve no purpose other than to try to show how clever the author is to tell a story in a non-conventional way.

Yes, Faulkner is an Important Writer. Yes, I've read some of his short stories and liked them. Yes, his books are Modern Classics. But I simply didn't like this book.

Featured on Studio 618

My Happy Denim Purse has been featured on the Studio 618 blog! It's part of their regular Friday Finds feature. Here's a link to the feature, and here's a link to their shop. Thanks, Theresa!

A Tale of Two Curtains

It's been six months since my first foray into making curtains, and I have to say I think my second attempt was much more successful!

We'd had these curtains in Daniel's room since we moved here -- they're just beach blankets that I hemmed on one end so a curtain rod could slide through. I made them a decade ago, and while they were better than nothing, I really wanted something more fun for his room.

Well, our local Wal-Mart is getting rid of their fabric section, like so many other Wal-Marts. They're selling off their current fabric at 50% of the regular price, so I bought a few yards of some different fabrics. One of them was an ultra-cute Veggie Tales pattern, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to make curtains for Daniel's room out of it. They had just enough left on the bolt, thank goodness.

So last week, I sewed up one curtain. I just put a plain white cotton fabric on the back, nothing fancy. But I didn't have time to sew them both, so for almost a whole week, Daniel's room looked like this.

But yesterday I finally sewed up the other curtain and hung it in his room. They make his whole room glow a little bit green, and he loves this fabric so much, he kept trying to pull the curtains right down, so I had to use some leftovers to make him a little bitty blanket to play with (which he now puts over his stuffed animals so they can "take naps").

If you don't know what these Veggie Tales are all about, visit BigIdea.com to learn more. They're computer-animated half-hour shows that tell Bible stories and teach lessons and morals, but in a really fun way. I got into them in college, where a bunch of my friends loved them, and we've got quite a few on VHS and DVD. Daniel loves watching the Silly Songs on YouTube (where Big Idea has their own official channel), and I even got him their greatest hits CD to listen to in the car. We don't let him watch "real" TV or many movies, but Veggie Tales are A-OK by us! (In moderation, of course.) They're the least-annoying kids' edutainment I've ever seen, too. Can't beat that!