"Just tell me I am beautiful"

On Saturday night I was ill and pretty much stuck on the couch.
Daddy loving football and all had to watch the playoffs.

Well the kids started getting bored with football and wanted to watch one of their movies.

So daddy got smart. Set up the little kid folding table in the living room. The kids got their chairs. And daddy set up the portable DVD player.

The kids loved it. They sat side by side and put there arms around each other and cuddled. It was way too cute.









Then Anna turns to Alan and says "Just tell me I am beautiful."

Oh boy did we laugh. It was so cute and honest.

On the coldest day of the year (so far)

My slippers broke!

How do slippers break you ask.

Well the rubber sole part came off the bottom enough to make them a walking hazard.

To me wearing slippers are very important. I hate being cold and the floors of my 80 yr old house are very cold.

So with all of these horrible cold weather and slippers breaking made me think of ways to stay warm.

Tips to keeping warm when it is way to cold out.

1. Wear two pairs of socks because your slippers are broken you will need the extra warmth. This will keep the stinky feet smell down too.

2. Carry your 2 year old big boy son around who weights a third of what you weight. As you are car ring him around use his body heat to warm yourself.

3. Run around and try to pick up all the toys you can in 5 min. make a game out of it! This will entertain the children which will prevent them from picking them up themselves. Which will insure you more to pick up. Which will in turn keep you warm.

4. Fold laundry standing up. Keep the basket or pile of unfolded clothes on the floor. This will force you to have to bend over a million times. I do this instead of sit ups so it is a workout and will keep you warm.

5. Make homemade soap. The smell from making the soup will warm your heart. Which will warm your whole body up.

6. Do not have sex. Yes you read that right DO NOT HAVE SEX. Why you ask? You have heard its great way to stay warm on a cold winters night. Well its not. You have to take off your clothes to have sex and taking off clothes makes one cold. So keep your clothes on and try some cuddling or heavy petting for a change. I know its hard to change our ways.

7. Vacuum the whole house. And after you are done with one room give your children crackers to eat over the clean carpet. This will insure more vacuuming and warmth.

7. Chase your 4 yr old around trying to get her socks back on. While you are wearing 2 pairs of socks yourself and doing this list of things to stay warm, she thinks that her feet are hot and takes off her socks a million times a day. Well she thinks she never needs to wear socks. And today on the coldest day of the yr (so far) you tell her she needs to wear socks today. And every time you touch her feet they feel like ice cubes. This is quit the way to warm up because she is very fast and has very wiggly feet.

8. Live in a 2 story house with laundry in the basement. This will insure that you run up and down the steps many times in one hour.

9.DO NOT GO OUTSIDE for any reason it will make you cold and you will have to start this list all over again.

How cold is too cold?

I think -19! Is way too cold. It was a recorded low of -19 last night. A record breaker. When I was up at 2am to change Alan's very wet diaper and pjs I saw that it was -10. It is currently 8. BRRRRRR. The weatherpeople (yes the all holy weatherpeople) are saying its going to be just as cold tonight.

I do not want to go outside when its this cold. I don't want to take the kids outside when its this old. I promise that this August when it is 100 I will not complain about being hot.

Grandma Kramer's Banana Nut Bread

2 1/2 cup flour
1 cup sugar
3 1/2 baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 Tbs olive oil
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 cup nuts
1 cup smashed banana

Preheat to 350
Combine all
Beat well

Bake in 9x5x3" loaf pan for 55-65 mins

Cool for 10 mins then remove from pan

The biggest blanket....

....I have ever made. Good Golly it took me forever.
This Quilt was for my father-in-law Alan and his wife Colleen's Christmas gift.
Seeing how I took the


Here are some supplies I bought. The fabric being for the quilt.





So I cut and cut this fabric and started sewing like crazy and came to realize I didn't have enough fabric. The reason I didn't start out with enough fabric being that I called my sister at the store asking what the pattern called for. She told me 4 yds of 4 fabric. GOT IT! Well to come to find out that was for a full size quilt. I was making a King. So off to JoAnns I went to get more fabric. Well I was able to get enough of all but the flower fabric. I had to drive to the store 20 mins away to get the flower fabric.

Then I cut and cut and sewed and sewed. I even had my husband cutting the squares apart as I am speed sewing to get this done in time for Christmas. I mean it was for his dad he could help just help a little. I broke part of my sewing machine because I was tired and sewing like a crazy person.

Then came the cutting. The quilt pattern is all the raw edges on one side and they are cut every inch to give it a raggy look. Well the cutting part was very time consuming. It felt like I may never finish.

After I got it all cut I had to take it to the Laundromat. Which did on Dec 23rd. I was cutting it close. It was to be gifted on christmas eve. I had to take it to the Laundromat because it was too big for my washer. I knew I could dry it in my dryer I just needed to get it washed.

Drying it took forever because it was so big and thick. The quilt was still in the dryer minutes before we had to leave for the christmas party.

Here is the finished product
Some of these pics I was standing on top of the desk to get the whole quilt in the pic.










I am bummed I didn't get a close up shot of the raw edge side.

And the gifted

Family Cloth

So what is family cloth?

Well its cloth toilet paper.

Why would someone use that?
Isn’t that nasty?

Well we use it to cut down on waste and lower our expenses.

I was giving a stack of really old cloth diapers that you had to fold way down to make a diaper. So cut these up into 2 sizes ones for #1 and #2. The #1 are small 2”x2” squares and the #2s are about 4”x4” squares. I have them sorted into piles and they sit right on the changing next to the toilet. After they are used they are deposited in the diaper pail sitting next to the toilet. I use the #2 ones for changing poppy diapers. I just get them wet and use them.

Each cloth is 2 ply and super soft from being used many times before I even received them. I did learn that I needed to hem the edges after cutting them and using & washing a few times, they began coming apart. So one day I stood ironing my toilet paper so I could sew them together the whole process cracked me up.




Why did I start using family cloth?
Well I have been really trying to reduce usage of things that create waste in our lives. I was using cloth diapers but store bought wipes. I stood at the store one day thinking way am I buying diaper wipes? I was already washing diapers why not cloth wipes. So I didn’t buy any wipes went home and made my own. I thought my husband was going to think I really lost it this time. I thought he would swear off changing dirty diapers. But I just told him grab a few cloths get them wet. Use them then fold them up in the diaper and drop it in the pail no problem. He actually jumped right in and started using the cloth wipes.

So when did I start using them myself?
Shortly after. I was disgusted in the thought of throwing paper – trees - down the toilet every time I had to go. Now getting my 4 yr old to switch was hard because she was use to reaching over to the roll. She now actually will go and get one wet and wipe her bottom and put it in the pail. I am a proud mama.

Yes I was still buying toilet paper. I didn’t think my husband would make the switch. I wasn’t even going to ask him. I knew the thought would disgust him.
But them one day we were at the store and I was looking for the cheapest pack of toilet paper. I turn to my husband and inform him that this is a 12 pack and it better last him a yr. Looking at me puzzled he asked me what I was going to use because I use 5 times more then he does. I turn to him and whisper that I don’t. Even more confused he says loudly “Then what do you use?” I whisper once to him family cloth. “What?” He says. “Cloth toilet paper, the stuff that has been sitting right next to the toilet for the last 6 months.” He then just says “oh” and walks on the nest aisle. I have no clue what he was thinking at that point.


SOOOOO like a few weeks after that little show at the store. My husband comes up to me and asks if the cloth is softer. I replied yes. So I wonder if he is using it but I doubt it.

The washing issue.
I know many are dying to know about the washing. They get washed with the cloth diapers with hot water. I run the washer 4 full cycles and two rinse cycles. They always come out smelling clean. I feel they are clean enough to blow my nose with.

I understand that when people come to my house they have no clue what my cloths are for and that is ok. Just don’t throw trash in the diaper pail next to the toilet.

I get picked on by family members but I know that family cloth is what is right for me and my children. And I no longer am flushing trees down the toilet.

Thanks for reading all my potty talk.

Saving the earth one roll at a time.

Now I have to share the lovely song my husband made up. That makes me think of our family cloth.

(Sing it to the tone of Lollypop, Lollypop)

Mama Butt
Daddy Butt
Anna Butt
Alan Butt
Family Butt
Bum Bum Bum

The Big Read

The Big Read reckons that "the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling -surprisly haven't read but plan too when the children get older.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (in process)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Well I have read 16 and have many others on my to read list.