Tales of a Shoebox Princess

Recently I attended a bridal shower in which the theme was kitchen gadgets. I bought my gadget, a pizza cutter, and was attempting to wrap it in a somewhat cutesy fashion. I put it in a little gift bag, but it rattled around in the bag and I was afraid it was going to rip open several large and unsightly holes, rendering the act of gift-wrapping moot. So I grabbed some tissue paper to pad around the pizza cutter, and then in the act of getting distracted from the task at hand, I lost the tissue paper. I could not find where I had put it no matter how carefully I looked. Uttering several loud GRRRRRRRRRs, I cast about for something else to pad the gift with and I hit upon some dishcloths I had knitted in years' past and stuck two of them in the bag to cushion the pizza cutter. Knitted dishcloths=double duty: padding and washing! The dishcloths were well-received at the shower, and one lady came up to me and said, "It was my birthday recently, why didn't you give me dishcl

Why? Because I haven't posted about shoes in a long time.  Hayley has very particular taste in a lot of things, and I found out yesterday that one of those particular things is shoes. Not that I mind her having a very particular taste, and particularly in shoes, but it does make for somewhat of a frustrating shopping trip when her particular tastes don't mesh with mine. (Spoiler alert: it turns out fine in the end). There were lots of knitted brows and sighs and curled lips and grrrrrrrs. She wanted skater shoes for school and I guess I didn't mind what she had in mind (although secretly I had hoped she'd changed tastes in the nanosecond before we opened the doors to Kohls--the store for which I had a 30% off coupon--to something a little more teenager girly that maybe involved the color light blue or had pink stitching or something other than a black pair of Chucks)(whew, that was a long parenthetical remark. Are you still with me? I could live with her having blac

Scout camp looks fun. Jim took a few pictures during his short stay at Many Point with Matt, and I wish YW camp when I was a teenager was more like scout camp. In fact, I wish YW camp NOW was more like scout camp. Matt makes his wilderness survival shelter He has to sleep in this shelter for one night.  Granted, I might not want to sleep out in a shelter I made myself unless I was able to make it spider-proof, but I would love to have had to MAKE a shelter at camp. Sticks and I got along pretty well when I was a kid. My mom always said kids don't need toys, all they need are sticks and dirt and they'll have plenty of fun. Matt gets ready to kayak I suppose I didn't need scout camp to tool around on a lake in a small paddle-powered watercraft. Julie, Jenni and I went out in mom's canoe on Lake Minnewashta plenty of times so I do feel I fulfilled the "spend time paddling around a body of water" aspect of scouting. There are more adventures to

I don't really have anything to post about, but I feel like sitting at my computer and tapping on keys for a few minutes. Hayley and I are the only ones home for a few days. Jim took Matt up to scout camp and will be there into next week. So it's just me and my little girl. Hayley and I went to Mom's to mow her lawn. I came home with peaches. (Dave, if you ever read this blog, know that I have your half box of peaches. You have a week to claim them.) It used to be strange to go Mom's for a visit with my little kids in tow, and Mom without her children. Now I find myself over at her house with very few of my own children. I'm moving toward that phase of life that I thought was strange to see my mother in: the empty nest. Last night Jim and I went to see The Avengers. As far as movies go, it was fairly predictable, except for when two of the good guys fought each other and left the bad guy to sit by and watch. I thought that was a nice twist. I liked it though b