Just for Fun

 

Jay and I made this video for the kids yesterday. There’s a stop-action display at the children’s museum in Bangor and I’ve been wanting to do my own since we went there last week!! The kids directed the story and hubby and I did all the work, ahem, the rest. I should have taken the time to download some kid music, but the children were getting impatient to see their work. I hope you enjoy!  By the way, the story is that Rainbow Dash discovers a treasure map, brings it back to her friends and they go and find the treasure. Then the evil pirates swoop in and take it away from them at swordpoint. I have a feeling there is going to be a sequel. These ponies don’t take crap like that lying down!

P.S. Amelia was adamant that the ponies be properly dressed for their video debut. She’s so cute :)

 

Lazy, Lazy, Lazy. . . .

Well, I haven’t been entirely lazy, I’ve started a bunch of projects, but none are done yet. Things keep getting in the way.

Like this woodpecker, investigating our stump that the kids decorated with clam shells. This picture was taken through two windows, so it’s a bit blurry. Jilly-Bean and I had to lounge in the sunroom and watch him for a good half hour until he flew off to a new tree.

And this guy. The kids missed him when I drove past, and he was still there when I turned around for a second look. Considerate of him :)

And these little lovers. Wish I’d gotten video of this. They swooped down to the water together, took a short stroll on the beach, had a little swim and then took off again. It was like a little goosey date at the beach!

Last week, Backhoe Guy showed up to replace the septic system. He brought a backhoe (well, duh) and lots of big trucks and loads of dirt.

And then this little guy fell in love. He spent most of the week in my room supervising the construction :)

We spent all of last Sunday at the beach. Well, several beaches actually. Amelia is ‘digging for clams’. Jay neglected to tell her how far she’d have to dig, so she was occupied for quite some time.

Jay and Reese went hunting for sea glass. The kids are getting REALLY good at finding it! (Jay’s always been good at spotting it.)

I was surprised to see this pretty bridge down at our beach. I hadn’t even noticed it before! I need to go investigate it further!

Same day, different clothes. Poor boy fell into a tide pool. (Good thing Mommy is prepared for anything.)

Not to be undone, so did Amelia. *sigh*

Reese had his first swimming lesson. He got to be a crab, he was psyched :)

Amelia hosted her first tea party with real, living, breathing guests!

Jilly-Bean got into a bag of clothes and played dress up for a good hour! Natural born girlie-girl, that one!

     

We’ve blown bubbles, bubbles and more bubbles. (in fact, Reese and I are outside blowing bubbles as I write this!)

 

Amelia and Jillian got matching carseats, finally. Jilly-Bean is absolutely thrilled to be facing forward. She squealed, chirped and giggled the entire ride into town!

          

And Reese started the monumental task of ridding our yard of dandelions! What a sweetheart!

So, I hope you haven’t missed me. Scratch that, I do hope you’ve missed me ;) We’ve been capitalizing on the unbelievably gorgeous weather and keeping the kids busy! I’ll be back soon, hopefully with some finished projects and some yummy recipes to share!

Just a Little Peeksie

The following exchange took place as I was gathering my things for a quick trip to the grocery. . . . .

Me: Anything you need from the store?

Hubby: Huh? What? *looks up from computer* Nothing I can think of. Like what?

Me: Oh, you know, like whipped cream? *smooch* *smooch*

Hubby: Oooooh. . . .

Me: Chocolate sauce? *smooch* *smooch*

Hubby: Yeah. . . .

Me: Fruit roll ups? *smooch* *smooch*

Hubby: Wait. What? *reaches for glass of water*

Me: Well, those edible underwear are just so darn expensive, I thought we could just make some ourselves!

Hubby: *stream of water shoots out his nose and across the room* *sputtering, followed by hysterical laughter*

And since I tend not to make idle promises. . . . . .

You know, fruit roll ups are surprisingly easy to work with! I just cut it out with a paring knife. Ta da!!! This is going in his lunch tomorrow ;)

Google Reader is Totally Going to Work for You!

This, my friends, is Google Reader. I know most of you know what this is and probably love it as much as I do, so you can feel free to go about your merry way. But I do know there are a couple of you looking at me like, ‘what the heck is she blathering on about now, I’ll just skip down to the food pictures.’ Well, STOP! There are no food pictures today. No, wait, don’t go yet!!! You need to know about Google Reader first.

Since you didn’t get to my site this morning from Google Reader that means you either had my blog bookmarked (thank you!), you manually typed in my web address (again, thanks!), or you clicked on me from a link. (and aren’t you glad you did? lol!)  Now, I’m going to assume that if you like to read my blog, you probably like to read other blogs. What’s not to like, there’s a whole world out there, a blog on every topic imaginable! Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of you searching through your bookmarks every day and visiting all your blogs separately, someone got to your computer ahead of you and got all the new postings up for you? Then all you would have to do is grab a cup of coffee and read all the new entries. Wouldn’t that be FANTASTIC?!? Kind of like a daily magazine that you get to design for yourself! That is what Google Reader is.

I follow 101 different blogs. That’s a lot of extraneous clicking, if you ask me. And not everybody posts every single day. So there’s some wasted clicking. Google Reader automatically finds all the new posts and brings them to me every morning.  Sounds awesome, right? Well, let’s get you signed up! Go to https://www.google.com/accounts 

First things first. Do you have a Google account? I use gmail, so I have an account. It also lets you create a Google ID, which comes in mighty handy when commenting on bloggers’ posts for one thing. Ok, get yourself a Google account and sign in.

Once you’re signed in you should come to this page. . .

Go down to the bottom where it says ‘more’, and give it a click.

Scroll down a bit to where it says ‘Reader’ (in the right hand column)

Give ‘Reader’ a click and you should see this. . . .

Welcome to Google Reader!!! Now you need to add some subscriptions. There are many ways to do this. Let’s start by leaving this window open and opening another. Now go to your favorite blog, say. . . . http://tuffetblog.blogspot.com/?

Right under the lovely header on this randomly selected blog, you see the words Posts RSS. I forget what RSS stands for (I’m sure you could Google it if you must know), but that is what you’re looking for. Give it a click. P.S. This is in different places on every blog, just search around until you find it!

It takes you to a screen with different options of having the site’s feed delivered to you. Since the only one I’m familiar with is Google Reader, and since it’s the title of my post, we’ll go with that. Click on the little button that says ‘+Google’.

The page will automatically take you back to your reader and tell you that you need to click the button to subscribe. Everybody’s doing it, go ahead! Click the button!

There, you’ve subscribed! Google Reader will thoughtfully bring you the last 10 posts of the blog you’ve just subscribed to and from that point out it will bring you every new post the blogger puts up! Done! No more extraneous clicking!

But wait! What if you can’t find the button on the blogger’s page that lets you follow? What will you dooooooooo?

Calm down, I’ll tell you. First, let’s go to a different blog. Say, for instance, http://songberries.blogspot.com/ 

Let’s skip looking for the button altogether. Just go up to the address bar and highlight it. Then press CTRL+C to copy it. Now, switch tabs back to the Google Reader that you left open earlier.

Do you see the button at the top of the left hand column that says, ‘+ Add a Subscription’? Click it!

It opens a little box right underneath. Click inside the box and press CTRL+V to paste the web address in.

Or, if you’re old school, you could just type it in the box yourself. Now click on ‘add’ and presto! Another blog added to your reader!

Now all you need to do is take five minutes and enter in all the blogs you have bookmarked and just watch all the posts fly in! Easy-peasy!!!

There are all sorts of cool things that Google Reader can do for you, this post would be a mile long if I listed all of them. Some of my favorites show up at the bottom of each post.

See the bar right under ‘Carol’ that says ‘add star’, ‘like’, ‘share’, ‘share with note’, ‘email’ etc? That’s an awesome bar right there! When you read a cool post that you think might appeal to your Great-Aunt Edna you can just click ‘email’.

Enter Great-Aunt Edna’s email address, write a quick note and hit send! And Google Reader will send your note and the post to her! Cool, huh!!!!

You can also click the little star next to ‘add star’. That will put a star on it (duh) and it automatically saves it for you! See in the left hand column, where it says ‘Starred Items’? Click that.

Look! There it is! And you hardly had to do anything! Awesome!

Okay, what if you saw a recipe in a food blog and you don’t remember whose it was? What if you forgot to star it? What then? Are you sunk? Do you have to wade through your history? No. This is so cool! Watch this!

Go up to the top of the screen. There is a search box just to the right of the words ‘Google Reader’. Type in what you’re looking for. Whoopie pies, for example. Who isn’t looking for whoopie pies?

Look at that!!! Coooooooooooooooooooooooool!!!!!!

So, now you have a shiny new toy to play with, and zero excuse not to keep up on your favorite blogs! Enjoy!

Now pop on over to We Are That Family and bone up on all the other great tips!

Movin’ On

I actually wrote this a couple of weeks ago and thought I had posted it. Apparently it didn’t take. So I’ll post it today to kinda get you up to speed with what’s been going on in the Tuffet household!

 

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. You could say life-altering. Wow. A bit over two weeks ago we decided to cut our losses here in Moses Lake and move to New England. The company Jay has been working for has had lay-off after lay-off this past year and a half, and while Jay has always made it through, it’s been overwhelmingly stressful. Jay’s family all lives in New Hampshire, so we decided to move there and start over.

But first we had visitors! Lots and lots of visitors! Practically everyone I know descended on us to spend a last few days and say good bye. It was great! Really, really sad, but I couldn’t have been happier that everyone came. (I love you guys!)

Then we had a garage sale. Wow!!! I had been dreading it with every fiber of my being, but it turned out to be a TON of fun and we made a huge wad of cash in the process. It was all due to my gorgeous, wonderful, talented sister-in-law, Akvile! She was absolutely amazing. I woke her up at the crack of dawn and she cheerfully helped me lug everything outside, set it all up, and price everything. I just don’t have the nerve to ask someone for money for my old crap, so it was great to get an outside opinion. I left all the pricing in her hands and didn’t end up feeling guilty for charging people for my stuff!

 

Thank you, Mark , for watching the kids all day! It would have been chaos if they’d been running around! 

 

Since the garage sale I’ve been packing, packing, packing. Woops, got a little carried away!

 

There’s my girl!

Taking a break to share a sweet treat with Grandpa.

 

My parents came up to help us pack and load the moving truck. I don’t think we would have gotten it all packed in if it wasn’t for my dad, Packer Extrordinaire!!! That truck is absolutely full to bursting, you couldn’t fit another whisk on that truck! It’s FULLLLLLL!

So, we’re literally leaving today to start a week long trek across the country. I kinda can’t believe it’s really happening, it feels so surreal! My gorgeous friend Carrie planned our itinerary for us, I can’t wait to see where we are stopping ;) Thank you, April, for watching Reese (alllllllll day!!) yesterday, it was so much easier with one less child underfoot! Oh, and thank you, Dr. Loiseau, for squeezing me in yesterday to fix my broken tooth. It would break on MOVING DAY!!!

Last Camping Post, I Promise! (Until the Next Event)

 

A little Cliff’s Notes so you’ll understand the following pictures a little better. . . .

The SCA is a global reenactment organization. The ‘known world’ is divided up into many different kingdoms. We live in the kingdom of An Tir, which is comprised of Washington, northern Idaho, part of Oregon, and part of Canada. Each kingdom is ruled by a king and queen. You get to be king/queen by fighting for it. Literally. The event we went to, September Crown, is where the tournament takes place that decides the king/queen for the next six months. To win the crown you need to enter the tournament, fight a whole bunch of guys and come out on top. They fight with ‘swords’ made from rattan (solid bamboo) and wear armor that ranges from plastic (pickle barrel) to boiled leather to actual steel. And they aren’t messing around. There are a bunch of rules of things you can/can’t do for safety’s sake, but these guys are out to win. There are usually a few minor injuries and a LOT of bruising! The fights aren’t scripted, the fighting style is based on actual period styles.

This is, I think, the warm up/practice for the Squires Tourney.  It’s hard to tell from the picture, but it was raining fairly hard. And they were out there fighting anyway!

  

This was a rapier duel (doesn’t that sound awful?) later in the day when the weather cleared up.

I don’t know this lady, I just thought she had cool garb. Jay informs me that she is a Baroness. (Essentially the president of her part of the kingdom.)

I think this guy is a King. Not sure. But check out his cloak. It’s freaking amazing. It’s even more amazing in person. It’s got griffins on either side that you can’t really see from this angle. Just wow.

Check out the horsehair on the helm! Cool!

This one too!

A little wandering cutie.

My little cutie!

Relaxing with Uncle Jacob. (And keeping the poor guy warm!)

Reese trying on a kind squire’s helm.

 

This is Davin. (The guy in the center with the yellow band.) Or, more accurately, his Grace, Sir Duke Davin Steingrimsson. He’s the knight that Jay is squired to. Huh, this is getting complicated. He’s the guy who is/has been teaching Jay to fight. He’s been King three times, hence the lengthy title.

Davin blocking a desperate attempt.

Davin after putting the smackdown on that knight.

Davin’s last fight of the day.

He took out the guy’s legs. (If they get hit in the leg or arm they ‘lose’ that appendage but get to keep on fighting Monty Python style until they take a ‘critical’ hit.

That’s right, Davin, hit him when he’s down! lol!

What? Davin dies anyway!

So, the way this particular tournament was played was a Sweet Sixteen. You start with 8 fighting arenas with 8-9 knights each. Those 8-9 all fight each other and the two people with the highest amount of wins in each arena move on. Then those 16 knights move to a double elimination round where they get two ‘lives’ to either lose or end up as the last two fighters. Those two then fight each other for the title of King. This video is a bit lengthy, but is the last fight and determined the winner! They are SERIOUS. Definitely worth the watch! Hail the King!

This was the last camping post, I promise! There’ll be food tomorrow! Maybe Whoopie pies. . . . . .