Source: A Picture Book for Newbery! (REJOICE!)
I love this book!
Source: How to Plan an Author Skype Visit (Fun Tips for Authors, Teachers and Librarians)
Excellent suggestions on how to play exciting author Skype visits to classrooms. Thanks, Tara.
Source: Advice for publishing a children’s book : Mom Click
Straight forward advice for becoming a writer for children.
Source: Some Humor for your Saturday!
Descriptions of a book to the younger generation.
Never fear. Nana had the grands over for a wild and seriously crazy evening of decorating gingerbread cookies. That is not an understatement.
For the past few years, I have decorated gingerbread houses with the grands. But this year, with 3 boys and 1 girl, six years old and younger, I thought gingerbread cookies would be much easier. I was right.
But we still made a big mess, gobbled too many decorations, and spread icing far and wide. One nice thing about decorating cookies instead of houses was that we could eat our work instead of letting it sit around and petrify into cement.
I’m not so sure the parents agreed. But like any good grandparents, we played, made memories, fed them too much sugar, and sent them home.
Here are a few photos from our Gingerbread Party. Notice the series when Gage decides he is GOING to have his plate and cookie (Nana had to decorate his, as he can’t eat cookies yet). Of course when we are all watching his actions, Donavyn chooses that moment to look at the camera instead of eating the icing and candy off of his gingerbread boy.
Tips:
1. Make the cookies in advance. Definitely. I used giant cookie cutters and made 1 girl and 3 boy cookies. The extra dough was used for normal cookies.
2. Sort candy into individual bowls. That way, each child gets the same things to put on their cookies. Or, I mean, the same amount of sugar to eat.
3. Give each child a cookie sheet as a workspace. Escaping candies and sticky knives stayed right where they needed to be.
4. Forget the fancy icing. Just buy a tub of white icing. It spreads so nice and easy. The icing in the gingerbread house kits is horrible and making a glaze icing that doesn’t spread is frustrating.
5. Enlist someone else to take photos. No way could this Nana help everyone, keep Gage from eating stuff, and take photos. Even with assistance, taking pictures of our completed cookies was the hardest part!
6. Have fun! Eventually we will get back to the houses. But for now, keeping it simple makes more sense. And next year, when we have 5, I think I will have to adopt yet another helper for crowd control.
Happy December traditions!
Source: 10 Habits of Highly Effective Writers
Thanks for the great tips! Sound advice, writers.
Source: Smorgasbord Health – Vitamin of the Week – Vitamin A – Beta-carotene
We love sweet potatoes! Boiled, mashed, and combined with a little bit of butter, sour cream, and cayenne. Tasty and spicy. Thanks, Sally.
Source: Cheesy Potato Casserole
These sound so yummy!
Does anyone recognize this?
It is absoutely necessary for a stove to work. Don’t ask me for a technical name, but this odd looking contraption plugs in somewhere inside the gas stove, and the flints mysteriously spark and make the gas stove click on. That would be the gas stove that cooks our meals. Not the gas insert that heats a home.
Notice the flint is broken.
Which means the stove is broken.
This piece is only about 1/8 of an inch wide and about 2 inches long. Despite that tiny size, if it doesn’t work, the stove doesn’t work.
Let’s say the flint plug (oh, I like that name) is the bridle that controls the Clydesdale stove.
It’s time for a new flint plug. Day 3 without and counting.
On the other hand, I have successfully poached my first ever chicken breasts for Thai salad and it was wonderful. Much faster than roasting.
Moving on to more stove top experiments.
Love, Laughter, and Life 