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Free Fillable Suzee Que Vintage Labels | Worldlabel Blog.

In case you were really excited by the previous post about making your own colorfast fabric labels, might I suggest using some of the amazing clip art that’s already out there on the web?

These are gorgeous: Free Fillable Suzee Que Vintage Labels | Worldlabel Blog.

If you love the one above (and oh, I do) you might also like the outstanding collection of free downloadable labels at iDiY. I’ve linked to the ones with a “french vintage” look but there’s lots more on the site.

Would it be crazy to relabel everything in my house right now?

Wait. Don’t answer that.

*Dolls And Daydreams*: Fabric Label Tutorial: Made from Things in Your Pantry!.

Link above goes to a tutorial for printing colorfast fabric labels (or appliques? or pillow covers? or? or? or?) at home. Easy. Cheap. Potentially much less dorky than the personalized ones you buy.

I’m assuming she’s using an inkjet printer – due to a previous job, I know far more about printers than most people, and I can tell you that this would be highly unlikely to work in a laser printer.

photo from marthastewart.com

I have a thing about pencils. In the cup on the desk, they all need to match. And they all need to be sharp and have erasers. Why would you have pencils that are NOT sharp??? That makes no sense to me. I also like for all the pens to be the same kind of pen.


My husband buys different pens every time he goes to the store, and then I have to throw out all the old pens, because they don’t match. WHY? WHY DOES HE DO THIS TO ME?

Marriage is a compromise, people.

More proof of my pencil craziness: when I go to my parents’ house, I usually sneak off to Wal-Mart and buy packages of pens & pencils and I throw out all the unusable ones in their pencil cup by the phone and replace them with new. Because I’ve answered the phone at their house and stood there for five minutes just trying to find a utensil that actually writes in order to take a message.

I’m not saying they’re bad people. I’m just saying I’m not sure who I inherited this pencil disorder from.

So here at Keeth Ink, in September, whether we need them of not, I buy new pencils. A new box of freshly sharpened pencils… the smell! The hope! The promise! The smell!

(Yes, I know most people went back to school two weeks ago.)

There’s something about turning the calendar over to September that just FEELS like back-to-school time. I’m not in school this semester, due to my being due to give birth in October. I’ll go back in the spring, but “Back to School in January!” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Of course, I don’t actually use pencils for school. I use uni-ball Vision Stick Roller Ball Pens, in either Micro or Fine tip depending on my mood. I have a fountain pen, but I find that it works better for slow, leisurely writing. For fast-and-furious note taking, the Uniball is my writing utensil of choice.

But I still buy new pencils. I like Paper Mate Mirado Black Warrior Cedar Pencils. I like the sleek black look of them, and I like that they are called “Black Warrior,” because anything with that name has got to be one awesome pencil. I also like that they are $2.50 per box.

But if I had the money to burn, I’d buy these babies from See Jane Work.

photo from See Jane Work

Because they’re pretty. Pretty, pretty pencils.

As are these:

photo from marthastewart.com

Someone made these.

When I saw this tutorial from Martha Stewart, my first thought was, “That’s stupid. Who would spend that much time painting pencils?”

But then, after I thought about it, I realized that it could be an excellent way to keep some children (or adults) quiet for 30 minutes or so, with minimal expense or mess. And you would end up with some cute and entirely usable items.

If you decide to make them, I would recommend a piece of styrofoam to poke the pencils into while they dry. As long as the paint wasn’t too runny. You see, I’ve thought it through.

Wherever you are, please enjoy this lovely first day of September. And buy yourself some new pencils, while you’re at it.

In high school, I ate lunch with my friends at the band table in the cafeteria. Actually, there were a lot of band kids, so this was the second band table from the salad bar. My sophomore year, the first day of school, I was sitting there with all my girlfriends, trying to be as cool as sophomore band girls can be. And then, the special needs teacher walked up… and asked us if it would be ok if her class sat with us.

In case you’ve never been to high school (?!?!), this is the kiss of death socially. To sit with the “retarded” kids? EVERY DAY? Seriously, who would do that?

We did.

I’m not saying we loved it, or did it because we were so saintly. I think we just didn’t know how to say no. But for three years, I ate lunch at that table every day with my band gals and the special ed kids. Even now, sometimes I go back to my hometown and see one of those “kids” grabbing carts at Walmart, or wiping tables at a restaurant. And when I see them, I’m glad I was kind to them when I was a stupid high school girl, whether I really intended to be kind or not.

Today, two of those band gals, the ones who sat at that lunch table with me every day, have daughters with special needs. One of them, my friend Jeneen, has a daughter who goes to school at The Little Lighthouse in Tulsa, OK.

The kids at The Little Lighthouse are there tuition free. With trained and licensed staff, who will voluntarily take a hold on pay if there is not enough money. They receive no federal or United Way funding.
Over 150 kids are waiting to get in right now, and it’s a 2-year wait.

Earlier today, Jeneen, mommy of a Little Lighthouse student, and possible the nicest, sweetest, kindest, meekest person ever to walk God’s green earth, got kicked out of the Promenade Mall in Tulsa for asking people to vote for The Little Lighthouse in the Kohl’s Cares Facebook contest. She thought she had permission from the right people, but I guess no-one told the security guard. Please believe me when I say that Jeneen is practically as nice as Mother Teresa, and way cuter. I can’t imagine anyone throwing her out of ANYWHERE.

Why was Jeneen harassing people at the mall? The winner of this contest – and make no mistake, it’s a popularity contest – wins $500,000 for their school. Imagine what a difference it would make to the special needs children and their families. Imagine how many kids from the waiting list could get in!

Please, please, pretty please, vote for The Little Lighthouse in the Kohl’s Cares Facebook contest. Do it now. Even if you have another school you are supporting, you can vote for more than one school. Let’s keep Jeneen’s daughter in school, and Jeneen on the right side of the law.

In case you read my crazy and offensive post on motherhood as performance, please note my full participation in the same. I threw a party for my son’s second birthday with a sailboat theme.

-I made everything myself.

-I took all the photos myself (I’m obviously not a professional photographer).

-Entire party budget was less than $200.

-I’m seven months pregnant.

-I’ve clearly lost my mind.

Here’s the cute party table.

Almost all of the cute printables are from Paper & Cake (I made a few complementary ones myself.) Printing your own partyware is cheap and rewarding, but you do need to start well in advance.

Paper pom-poms hanging from all the trees and crepe myrtles give a big bang for your buck. They end up costing about $.50 each.  I used Martha Stewart’s tutorial.

From the Paper & Cake printable: I printed the napkin rings on sticker paper and used them to label the water bottles. Tip: take the original label off first.

Here’s the sweet birthday boy with me & DH.

I. Am. So. Pregnant.

Also, I need to get my hair done.

Please look at the cute boys and the cute table instead of me.

I used Paper & Cake’s directions to make pinwheels, but I made them out of big 12×12 scrapbook paper and attached them to dowels with a staple gun. They are in cute little buckets filled with sand. (Cute buckets found at Target’s dollar bin.) I tried putting florist foam in the buckets, but it wasn’t heavy enough and DH ran to Lowe’s for sand at the last minute. Luckily, we live two blocks from Lowe’s.

Found the best prices on the requisite paper straws on Ebay.

Really wanted the cute whirly pops, too, but they just didn’t fit in the budget.

On the far left: fishbowl jello and some dolphin-shaped pb&j’s. I found the sandwich cutter at Buy Buy Baby for $2.99. I used the Paper & Cake boat placecards as food labels (note the boat “floating” on top of the jello).

Sandy cinnamon muffins, AKA Pioneer Woman’s French Breakfast Puffs. Thankfully, there were some of these left over for breakfast the next morning.

Sailboat cookie cutter from Williams Sonoma.

Did I mention I made all the food? I think that was a crazy choice. But it tasted good.

I didn’t make the chips, or the goldfish. Just bought those. These are the Paper & Cake printable snack boxes.

I made the cake, too. Covered with marshmallow fondant. A tip I might use for next year: You can go to your local grocery store bakery and order a plain frosted cake in the shape of your choice. Then you can decorate it, which is the fun part, without messing with all the layers and so forth.

I also made chocolate cupcakes, which I forgot to put out until halfway through the party, but I used the cute Paper & Cake cupcake wrappers & picks. I used this frosting recipe and iced them with a 1mm Wilton tip. You really do need the 1mm tip if you are going to get the fluffy professional look. It uses a lot of icing, though, so keep that in mind. The recipe link above makes enough icing to frost about 18 cupcakes with the 1mm tip.

Tips for a DIY party:

- use lollipop sticks for cupcake picks, rather than toothpicks.

-pick a color theme & stick with it

-buy what you can. Making all this food almost killed me.

-hang paper pom-poms & buy lots of balloons. That says “party” like nothing else!

-We started decorating at sunrise (literally, as soon as it was light enough to see) and still ran out of time. Do as much the day before as you can. Or hire people to do it for you.

- I didn’t get a picture of it, but I totally stole this cute idea for favors from Jack & Izzy. I just packaged sidewalk chalk in cello bags with some decorative paper at the top (from the Paper & Cake printable) and tied the Paper & Cake favor label to it. Amazingly, the sidewalk chalk was 20 pieces for $1 at my local Dollar Tree. The cello bags were $3 at Williams Sonoma, but I later saw them cheaper at Michael’s. So the favors cost just pennies apiece.

Speaking of the Dollar Tree, I bought all the plates, cups, silverware, napkins, ribbon, tablecloths, streamers, tablecloth weights, bottlers of bubbles, and mylar balloons at my local Dollar Tree. I think in the future I would use a cloth tablecloth (or piece of fabric), but other than that I was very pleased with my $1 items.

Inspiration came from many party blogs, but I have to admit I stole a lot of inspiration from Jack & Izzy.

I didn’t post pictures of all the kids playing in the sprinklers & splash pad, but they had a lot of fun. We did, too. But wow, I’m tired.

I’m not sure why I feel the need to apologize or have an excuse for going all out for my child’s birthday party. I have considered several possible reasons for this feeling:

-it’s not a competition, and my friends would still love me if I just threw a couple of Dora plates and a bakery cake out on the card table and called it a day.

-there are children starving somewhere, and I’m throwing out the crusts of these dolphin-shaped sandwiches.

- I’m working on a PhD and should therefore be serious, studious, and practical at all times, rather than expending mental energy making marshmallow fondant.

- I am a serious scholar (see above) who studies women’s issues and therefore my choice to be at home this semester should be analyzed thoroughly for all possible implications and meanings.

Do you see how I make myself crazy with all this? And believe me, I do.

In my own mind, homemaking/mommyhood has never really been my full-time job. Perhaps because I don’t think of it as a job. A relationship, yes. A responsibility, absolutely. A competitive sport, creative outlet, and performance art? Yes, yes, and yes.

And yes, I’ve read the reports that if you stay at home you are doing the work of someone who should be payed over $100k per year. I’ve read them ad nauseum. That still doesn’t make me think of motherhood as my “job.” Maybe that’s just semantics. Or maybe because I have never had a job I liked as much as I like my sweet child.

And here’s another thing  (and oh, am I going to get flak for this one)— I still don’t get why people say that staying home with your children is the hardest job in the world. Either I have really great kids, or I’ve had some seriously crap jobs. Is parenting hard some days? Yes. Is it as bad as working in a coal mine, or working retail during the holiday season? Thus far, I would have to say: not even close. People keep saying, “oh, just wait until (fill in the blank).” And then I get to the blank, and then past it, and I think, “well, that wasn’t so bad.”

But—and this is key—I have a supportive husband who co-parents with me. If I didn’t have him, I would probably be singing a different tune. And I can’t make claims to things outside my experience. If you are, for example, a single mom with a special needs child, then you may very well have the hardest job in the world. I haven’t walked in your shoes, so I can’t say.

I am, to be honest, interested in pregnancy, maternity and motherhood as a performance. If you read any of the mommy blogs that are out there, you can see this in action. This is not a negative criticism of mommy blogging – I support it FULLY. I read “mommy blogs” and love them. I am, however, interested in a scholarly sort of way in the meaning of these blogs. How do they “mean” when read as a whole? What about the party blogs (just google “children’s party blogs), which feature page after page of exquisitely executed, magazine-shoot-worthy theme parties for children who still poop in their pants? (Guilty as charged – I’ll get around to posting some pictures of the party I just threw for my two year old, so that I can participate to the fullest in “motherhood as performance.”)

Another thing that interests me about motherhood as performance is that fatherhood does not seem to have the same performative element. My dear brother is a stay-at-home dad, and I’m hoping he’ll weigh in with some insightful comments on this difference.

I’m hoping others will, too.

Why do we “perform” motherhood for the benefit of others?

Why do we NEED motherhood to be the hardest job in the world?

Why is it so offensive to suggest otherwise? Is it our need for validation? Our competitive nature?

My guess is that our complex response to feminism, this need to do it all and be perfect (or, in the case of the anti-mommy blog, deliberately imperfect), twists our perceptions of ourselves as women. I haven’t gone through all the implications of this, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Marsha Altman has some Jane Austen fanfiction that I enjoyed reading. The first in the series (for it appears to be a series) is The Darcys and the Bingleys. Altman continues Pride and Prejudice, picking up Lizzie’s and Jane’s stories right after the proposals.

An engagement drives the plot, as is proper for an Austen sequel. This time, it is Caroline Bingley who is engaged, to someone who is, of course, not who he seems to be. (Do I really need to tell you this? If you are surprised by these sorts of “twists” in a plot, I’m not sure I can do much for you in the way of reviewing.)

The plot has a bit of a mystery, reminiscent of Carrie Bebris’s Mr & Mrs Darcy mysteries. Not quite as mysterious, but there is a little bit of action and suspense.

One of the funnier sub-plots involves Charles Bingley soliciting Darcy for advice on “marital relations.” Several of the Austen fanfiction books I have read do the same — we must assume, I suppose, that Mr. Darcy’s perfection is complete in every way, including this one, and that Charles’s naivete knows no bounds. The allusions to the bedroom are fairly mild, and more amusing than anything else. It still makes me laugh that Darcy is always written as the more experienced one in P&P fanfiction novels (but, of course, much more principled in this area than Wickham).

Some reviewers (see the reviews at the Amazon link below) have pronounced judgment on Altman for allowing Darcy to get too drunk too often, and have called the book a farce. I don’t expect Jane Austen fanfiction to be terribly accurate to the “clear matter,” to be honest. I’m just looking for some quiet diversion while I take a nice bath. This fills the bill. If you are looking for something more than that, might I suggest some Fanny Burney?

The Amazon links:

The Darcys & the Bingleys: A Tale of Two Gentlemen's Marriages to Two Most Devoted Sisters


North By Northanger, or The Shades of Pemberley: A Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mystery (Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mysteries)


It’s about time for another Jane Austen fanfiction review, don’t you think? I’m in the mood, having viewed Miss Austen Regrets last night. It’s 90 minutes of Jane Austen as an aging spinster, but much feistier than the older Austen played by Anne Hathaway in the last few scenes of Becoming Jane. Olivia Williams plays Austen, and she does it well. Miss Austen Regrets also shows the relationship between the older Austen and her young niece, Fanny, which made me think a little more about Austen’s age and situation when she wrote Miss Bates, the spinster of Emma. Was she concerned that she had become the annoying spinster, a character without her own life, dependant on her a lovely young woman/her niece for news, joy, and connection to society? It’s something to think about.

If you want to watch Miss Austen Regrets, you’ll need to rent it from Netflix or buy the DVD of the recent Sense & Sensibility (it’s on the Special Features disc).

Sense & Sensibility (with Miss Austen Regrets) (BBC TV 2008)

Enjoy!

In case you don’t follow me on Twitter or missed something or just want it all in one place, here’s the best of the links I’ve posted & retweeted this week. (I realize it’s Wednesday, but today’s the day I have time, so… there ya go.)

Here’s a great post from @samplereality on @Profhacker about Teaching with Twitter.

Article from the New York Times on why we need digital downtime.

Free Amazon Prime membership for students! Grad students, too.

ProtoScholar on The Paperless Dissertation (good for any major project, not just dissertations)

The Perils of Literary Social Networking. This sparked a great conversation on Twitter and I was able to read a paper in progress that will be presented at an MLA conference by Renee Hudson and Kimberly Knight.

The difference between hyphens, en dashes & em dashes.

Go ahead & split infinitives if you darn well want to, from Grammar Girl.

A book of seventeenth century slang. Learn a new insult today!

I like to eat good bread. (Do you mind if I place-drop for a minute? Thanks.) I have lived in Greece, and traveled all over Western Europe, and I have become very spoiled with the eating of good bread. One look at my generous bottom will confirm this for you. And I have to say, that pre-sliced, plastic-wrapped crap at American grocery stores is entirely unacceptable.

The problem: good bread costs $4-$5 per loaf here in the good ol’ US of A. That, my friends, is also unacceptable.

Enter the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François. The concept is similar to the method made popular by Mark Bittman in the New York Times. Basically, you let the dough rise slowly in the frig, and you don’t knead it.

I follow the Artisan Bread method, keeping a large bucket of dough in the frig. I bake bread as needed, in a cast iron skillet or on a cookie sheet, in my decidedly low-end oven. And the bread I am turning out is spectacular, if I do say so myself.

Don’t want to buy the book? I confess: I didn’t. I found the link to the article & recipe on Mother Earth News. This article was written by the cookbook authors, so I didn’t feel bad about copyright or anything. The article is NINE PAGES long, but I’ve read the whole thing, along with many other blogs on this kind of bread, so I’ve summarized them and put some tips for baking below. I am not a food blogger, so my photography is a bit haphazard, but you should get the idea.

For this recipe you will need a dough rising bucket with a lid.

Mine is a plastic rubbermaid-type container from Big Lots. Or you could get all fancy with this one: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/dough-rising-bucket
Your dough-rising bucket should hold 6 or 7 qts.

You might also want a wooden spoon with a very short handle. One with a long handle will break, because the dough is quite stiff. I got mine from the dollar store but if it’s in the dishwasher I just use my hands.

The instructions look long but I just wanted to explain thoroughly. It’s quite easy once you get the hang of it.

Here we go!
No Knead Bread
From the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

6 cups water
3 TB yeast
3 TB salt
13 cups flour
cornmeal for dusting the pan

Put the water in the bucket first.

Then put the yeast and salt in and give it a stir.

Last, put the flour in.

The flour is measured using the scoop and sweep method: scoop from your flour bucket and then level off the top with a knife. Do NOT spoon the flour into the measuring cup. Do NOT use a 2-cup measure. I count the cups out loud so I don’t lose track. :)

Once the flour is in, stir it with your hand or a short-handled spoon.

The dough will be stiff, shaggy, and kind of wet. It will not be smooth, and you may have some lumps or dry spots. That’s OK! It will not look like bread dough normally does.

Now, put it in the frig for at least three hours (or overnight). If you are in a hurry, you can leave it on the counter for a couple of hours. Put the lid on loosely. It will rise quite a bit in the frig.

To bake: Sprinkle some cornmeal in a clean kitchen towel. Wash your hands & leave them wet so the dough won’t stick. Pull off a hunk the size of a small cantaloupe. To shape the loaf, pull the “skin” over the top and around to the bottom so that the top is smooth and only the bottom is bunchy.

Place the dough in the cornmeal towel and let rise about 45 minutes.

Place a cookie sheet or baking stone in the oven and preheat it to 450. (you may want to do this in the morning or evening; it kills my A/C to do it in the afternoon!) Plop the dough, cornmeal & all, onto the hot pan. Bake for 45 minutes.
Skillet method: I have a big cast iron skillet with a lid. I bake the bread in the skillet, 30 minutes with the lid on plus 15 minutes with the lid off.This retains steam and make a (slightly) better crust.

finished bread – this photo is awfully dark, because I’m baking after nightfall. When it’s 105 degrees outside, you don’t want to tax the air conditioning any more than necessary.

If your skillet or pot is enameled cast iron (i.e. Le Crueset), I recommed replacing the knob  on the lid with a metal drawer pull from the hardware store. That way you won’t melt the knob, because a 450 degree oven is HOT.

No matter how you bake it, let the bread cool on the counter for at least 30 minutes before slicing for maximum moisture retention inside the loaf.

The dough will keep for a couple of weeks in the frig. You can just pull off some dough & bake a loaf whenever! If the dough gets a tough skin on top, just make sure the skin is on the inside of the loaf when you shape the loaf for rising. It will bake up just fine.

Notes on ingredients:
Better flour = better bread. I use King Arthur Flour (regular unbleached, NOT bread flour)
This is the best yeast ever: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/saf-red-instant-yeast-16-oz

I also use King Arthur’s bread salt but I’m not sure it matters a whole lot. Regular salt works fine.

Repeat after me: NO MORE BAD BREAD.

Go forth, and bake.