Book selection

I love to read. Since I teach, I rarely have time during the school year to read for pleasure. However, the summer is a good time to catch up. I recently ventured to the local library for children's story hour with my 2 children. My youngest was in the stroller, so I thought I'd try to pick out a book or two from the adult's section. What a disaster! He was trying to reach every book he could and pull it off the shelf (they need to make those aisles a little wider). So I quickly grabbed 2 fiction books that looked interesting based on the cover. Turns out they were pretty good reads in my opinion, and I would recommend them to anyone interested in books about our friendships with other women. Circle of Grace by Penelope Stokes is about 4 girls who met and lived together in college, lost touch, and where there lives took them 30 years later when one was diagnosed with cancer. Thursdays at Eight by Debbie Macomber chronicles a year in the life of 4 friends who met in a journaling class, and continued to meet and share problems/struggles in their lives every Thursday morning at a local coffee shop.

Just Do It

I'm a procrastinator. I get overwhelmed with the daily tasks...dishes, cleaning, laundry...oh how I hate doing laundry. It never ends. When I get overwhelmed with everything, my first tendancy is to do nothing. Just sit and wallow in everything that needs to be done. However, I am trying my best to just get up and do something, anything. Empty the dishwasher, pick up a few toys, fold a load of laundry. Often, these little tasks take 5 or 10 minutes. I just need to get up when the commercials come on instead of changing the channel to see what else is on, since usually nothing is on. Even though I know I'll have to do most of it again tomorrow (or later today), the tasks are done for now. My house is a little cleaner, and I can relax knowing at least something is finished.

This morning I am proud to say I succeeded in "just doing it". I've been looking at those bananas on my counter for the last 2 days...getting riper by the minute. No one was eating them and no one was going to eat them. So this morning I got out the banana bread recipe and made a batch with my kids. What fun. We spent some quality time and for the 15 minutes it took us to mix up the batter, they weren't fighting or complaining they were bored. I have a very simple recipe and I usually have all the ingredients in my cupboards.

Cream together 1 cup of sugar and 2 eggs

Mix in 4 mashed ripe bananas, 1/2 Cup vegetable oil, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla

In a separate bowl, mix 2 Cups flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp salt
Gently mix it into banana mixture. Pour into 2 loaf pans and bake @ 350 degrees for 45 minutes-1 hour.

You can add chocolate chips, nuts...whatever you like. My kids will eat it plain and it's a nice change of pace from cereal for breakfast. You can also wrap it in foil and freeze it if you're not going to eat it all right away.

So today! Just do it!

scrapbooking

Sometimes we need a little motivation.

I love to scrapbook. However, having a very active 22 month old son who loves to be into whatever I'm into makes it difficult to find time and energy to scrapbook at this point in my life. My husband commented the other day that I haven't worked on my albums in awhile and wouldn't you know that later that afternoon my (now) 5 year old daughter got a kids scrapbooking kit at her family birthday party. Sunday she wanted to scrapbook with me, so I helped her arrange her stuff and got all my stuff out for an afternoon of "cropping". My husband tried so hard to keep him occupied, but the little man just had to join us. I ended up spending more time peeling stickers for him than working on my album, but my stuff was out. So later that evening, after the kids were in bed instead of crashing on the couch, I scrapbooked. Thanks Katie for having me get my stuff out. Who knows...maybe I'll do a little more this week.

Test

OK ~ My first attempt at blogging. I've had this account for a few months, just no time to figure out what I was going to put on it. Even now, my 22 month old is trying to climb on my lap and "help". My day of adventure begins.