Confessions of a Sci Fi Freak

1. I think Picard is sexy. It's the voice, dang it. He's scrawny and old, but he's got that comanding voice with a British accent (even though he was supposed to be French) and I can't get past that. "Make it so, number one."

2. I want my own dragon. A Pern dragon would be best, but I will take any dragon that likes me.

3. My children say "frakkin'" and they've never seen an episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Artists in Residance

Libby draws people now:

all over on every piece of paper she can find. big blob. two arms. two eyes. varrying numbers of legs. So close, yet so far.

Rilla took up taping "decorations" around the house, colored and cut out pieces of paper in random places. Steve gave her a notebook and told her it was her "art book." Rilla has now taken up collage art and my walls are safe. She likes to tape in found objects, aka candy wrappers and stray pieces of paper. It still surprises me to think of Rilla as inheriting my crafty/creative side. I don't know why. I just didn't think of her as the one who would. I'm changing my perceptions though so as not to add to her therapy fodder further.

Wanna See the Rest?

Polar Bear Press now has a blog. You can see it here: Polar Bear Press. We have three new collections debuting plus a bunch of chipboard shapes. My friends Kristy Lee and Ursula Page designed those. Totally cute stuff.

Papers Debut

I'm sure you were all breathlessly awaiting my new papers. ;) The line is called Cherished Friends. I went for a soft, feminine feel with a vintage look. I had a lot of fun designing the papers. I hope you like them as much as I do. I personally am getting a bit ancy waiting for the final prints to come. cross your fingers for me that I get to see them in person soon. :)


Tacy (has solid chocolate brown on the back):
Betsy (solid blue on the back):
Ribbon Sashes Back:
Ribbon Sashes front:
Cozy Quilt (solid dark yellow on back):
Sleepover front (solid cream on the back):
Party Dress Back (it's hard to see but the stripes are light blue):
Party Dress front (with blue dots):


there's also a set of matching letter stickers with four stickers in a friendship theme on the front.

Murphy's Law, the pantyhose corrollary

Murphy's Law, as everyone knows, dictates that anything that can go wrong will. A bit of a pessimistic statement, but since I'm a bit of a pessimist, I find Murphy's Law active in my life quite often.

There is a little known corollary to this law that basically rules my life. The Pantyhose Corollary states: If you buy pantyhose you hate, itchy, too small, too big, etc. they will last until Armageddon. If you buy pantyhose you love, smooth, fit perfect, look lovely, etc. they will get a run/hole/massive snag within the first two hours of you putting them on thus rendering them completely useless for a second wearing. This is why women complain all the time about nylons. The good ones do exist. We just never get to wear them long enough to remember that they exist.

I have stopped wearing pantyhose because I really didn't want to spend $20 a month replacing them every week or wear yucky ones. (I only wear skirts on Sundays.) I thought this would negate this law. Not so. Murphy found other ways to apply this one to my daily life.

For example: I was given a 2 cup plastic measuring cup as part of a set in a wedding gift. It was inaccurate and didn't have 1/3 cup markings. I hated it. I stuck it out because it did actually hold liquid and managed to be somewhat useful even if it didn’t quite measure right. Being as how it was somewhat flexible plastic and I don't own a dishwasher to wear off the markings, it lasted like a tank. Waiting until it wore out to replace it, like any good little Scrooge should do, was not making me happy, so I bought a new 2 cup measuring cup. I bought a Pyrex one so it would stack with my 1 cup measuring cup and I knew it measures accurately and should last well. HA!

I dropped it 2 weeks after I bought it and it shattered all over my kitchen floor. I have yet to buy a new one because I'll buy the same thing and I do not want to clean up glass this week.

If I hate something it will be part of my life forever. If I like it, I have to appreciate it quickly because it will last as long as the cookies in the cookie jar. (Which is also new and I like, so I expect someone to drop it before February.)

Murphy: teaching practicality and acceptance to housewives since 2000BC.

SMART Habit

I've been reading a new to me blog lately. It's called The Lazy Organizer and it's written by a woman named Lara. She's smart and funny and it's amazing how much she thinks like me about things. Because, really, being organized is not about being efficient. It's totally about making it easier to be lazy. I freely admit to being lazy. I also like organized things and places like the container store. I have not yet given my children cute nicknames like Lovely. They have to put up with redneck nicknames like Boo and Mo and Bubba.

Anyway, Lara has started a new challenge on her blog called SMART habit Saturday. We're supposed to pick a new habit and get doing it and report our progress. Me being the dork I am thought that we were just supposed to pick the habit and then be ready to start the whole thing today. Um. We were supposed to start last week.

So anyway, my goal is to balance my checkbook program everyday. For a while back in the dark ages I used to get onto my bank website everyday and download the days activity and then update our finance program for the day. I was so on top of our money when I did that. It took me about 15 minutes and I never bounced a check the entire time I was doing that and we spent our money more wisely. Well, things have not been going so well lately in that direction. I've been putting off balancing the checkbook and then I get surprised by junk. It's never good to be surprised by your bank account. It's never in your favor.

With Steve's new raise, I want to get a better handle on our finances. I've reread Financial Peace by Dave Ramsey. Now I just have to get Steve to read it again. It should help us with our goal of finishing the remodel of this house and paying down debt.

so SMART habit goal: Checkbook everyday. Progress: thought about it.

Aren't you so proud of me?

Reaping the Rewards of Neglectful Motherhood

Matt came up to me as I was having my midmorning break at the computer.

"Libby is cleaning up her marker mess."

Major alarm bells began ringing. "what marker mess?"

"the one she made." Three alarm situation here.

Last night I labeled a Christmas box with a red marker before I took it down to the basement. (Ok, so Steve took that one, but I took some of the others.) Aparently, I neglected to put the marker away.

In five minutes my lovely two year old had managed to decorate her own face and hands, a major portion of the dining table, both media cabinets, a laundry basket, and the TV. Luckily it was a dry erase so the TV is safe. We're not talking about the table. Good thing I like red.

the train cake

The end of November I was looking through a magazine's december issue. It had all these gift ideas in it of course. I ran across an image of the cutest train cake. Nine little cakes shaped like train cars made from a specialty cake pan. Darling. I took note.

This pan:


Matt loves trains. Matt would like a train cake for his birthday. I needed me a train cake pan. They sell them at Williams-Sonoma, so yeah, it's spendy. After some friends and I discussed how cute the pan was, I showed it to Steve, who agreed it was a cute pan and I could probably manage to find several uses for it.

That weekend I went shopping at the mall in the big city. The mall that just happens to have a W-S store. Since Steve's response to the train cake pan was positive, I decided to buy one. When I got home I was all excited to show my purchases and sheepishly added that I had gone shopping at W-S. "Do I need to take out a second mortgage?" asks my husband. I laughed and replied that no, I had just bought one thing. "not the cake pan." yes, the cake pan.

It seems that my sweet husband had bought it for me online that week for a Christmas present. Now I had two train cake pans. Steve took the one I bought back to the store.

I used the other one to make this for Matt for his birthday:

It's much cuter in person and with the white balance right on my camera. That's a double cake, one chocolate and one vanilla. (BTW, the recipe that came with the pan is fantastic, which is cool because I have a hard time finding recipes for scratch cakes that I like. ) The trains don't need a lot of frosting so it actually takes less time than decorating a traditional layer cake (and it looks better than the traditional layer cakes I always manage.)

The cake was a hit. Matt loved it and had a ball putting the M&M wheels on each car. I do have pictures of individual cars, but you won't be subjected to those unless you happen to be one of those unfortunates who is subjected to my scrapbooks.

My brother says I don't write often enough

and he's probably right. I've been busy lately though. You might remember my post about how crazy December was going to be for me. I was pretty much dead on with that. It was nuts. I finished everything except the stockings. Rilla's is still not quite done with the backstitching so I just let go of finishing all three of them. I had enough to do otherwise.

In related news, I finally get to say what my biggest project has been. I've designed a paper line for Polar Bear Press. I'm totally excited about it. It has a soft, vintage feel. I'll post pics when I'm allowed to do the sneak peek. (I'm sure my brother is anxiously awaiting that post. ;) )

Also, we've had another big change in our family. Steve got a promotion at work. He's now a Rehab Department Manager. It's like two steps up from where he was and a major deal (to me anyway.) I'm pretty proud of him. It's not often that PTAs get manager positions. It makes them bosses over full therapists. He's got a longer commute now, but only by about 15 minutes.

Tomorrow, I'll post pictures of my train cake from Matt's fifth birthday. Yes, he's five.