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My boys are crazy for sunday ticket these days. I guess I just never realized exactly how many games there were. It’s a good thing we have picture-in-a-picture, know what I mean? Between Time Warner sports and Cox sports
and everything else, they can literally be enjoying like 4 games at a time. I don’t mind, it’s adorable to see them all having so much fun together. The funny thing is when they argue about which game to watch, or when they’re watching one on TV and one on their phone, or when they flip back and forth from one channel to another trying to catch all the good plays. It just looks like so much work, I’d much rather cook.
The other day I made the most delicious snack for them. I used those little Vienna sausages, and a can of pop-pastry crescent rolls. I put like 1/4 slice of American cheese with each (cooked) sausage and wrapped them in the pop pastry dough, then I deep fried them. Generally we eat really really healthy, but every now and then, especially on game day I kinda get into serving junk foods. These little cheesy sausage rolls are super-tasty dipped in ranch dressing.
So what does your crew do on game day? What do you feed them? Who comes over? Give me the scoop, because this is more fun than we’ve had in ages!
All this talk of TV and now my husband and teenagers are suddenly all sunday ticket, apparently. And what do I know, really? My job is to feed them all, so it’s a tailgate party every weekend, right?
I mean, you should hear the heated debates and discussions that go on around here, all centered around cable sports. It’s really quite amusing. I do enjoy seeing them all bond and have fun, though. I mean, that’s the stuff memories are made of, right? So what about you, do you get Cox cable sports? Do you love it? Which teams are you rooting for this season?
I’ve been shopping for an online printer for my business cards, a carbon form I need printed for another business and also for scrapbooking. I’ve really been enjoying digital scrapbooking lately, but finding a printer for cheap online printing, that can handle each of my jobs is getting difficult.
One thing I found beneficial was that every time you see an order form that asks you if you have any coupons, you can search for Print Runner coupon codes and get even bigger discounts. I can’t wait to see my letterhead printed professionally, that will be so exciting!
Every time we move, something breaks. A friend of mine, who makes pottery and ceramic stuff, just moved from New Hampshire to Arizona. I thought for sure she’d have some story about breakage, but she hired some professional interstate movers and nothing broke at all. I was so impressed. Next time we move, I will have to call her to get the name of the company.
You think I’m kidding, we once dropped our big screen TV. it was the last thing to come into the house, we were tired, popcorn was popping and we just wanted to relax but instead, we were sweeping broken glass off the porch at midnight. I’m sure if we’d hired real movers we would have been watching that TV at 9pm. Instead, we have my husband’s friends help us move and we end up buying them beer and sub sandwiches. I haven’t compared the actual cost yet, but I’m sure that if you add up the price of the truck, the beer, the gas and the sandwiches, it probably really would be cheaper to hire local movers. Not to mention the fact that they probably won’t drop the TV.
All this talk of TV lately and wouldn’t you know it, we have ten thousand extra remote controls lying around now. I ended up ordering some Universal remotes that are supposed to allow me to combine everything into one handheld device. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could program my smartphone to be a remote for the TV, stereo, DVD player, satellite converter and VCR?
Maybe I’m just dreaming, but you’d think they would have an app for that. That would be funny, though, because then 4 of us would all have our own remotes. I’d turn it down, my husband would turn it up and my kids would change the channel, all at once. Maybe that’s not such a good idea  Although with portable DVD players, or maybe picture-in-a-picture and some cleverly set up headphones maybe we could make it work!
What do you think? Remote control apps for the iPhone- is it a good idea, or is it crazy?
Brought to you by our friends at Local TV Satellite
I think I mentioned once before how I often find inspiration for my art projects by watching TV. Sure, sometimes it’s the decorating shows, or the craft shows, but a lot of times it’s also the history shows and even the science or national geographic shows. I’m inspired by the stories and the colors, so TV is sometimes a big part of our lives. If you’ve read The Artist’s Way, then you know we all process things differently and it’s important to have “down time” to refill the artistic well of creativity. TV does that for me, sometimes.
I prefer Directv over cable, just because I have access to more channels, and a more diverse selection. You know, all those cable companies tend to distribute channels that are all owned by the same oligarchies, and people don’t even realize that they control the media like crazy. the reason you hear the same commercials over and over again is because the companies are all one. But with Direct TV, the networks that come in are from all over the globe. The kids get to watch Sesame Street in every language, it’s the coolest thing.
Working full time has been a trip. Mostly, I’ve found it a bit difficult to be missing my favorite shows. I’ve found plenty of ways to make time to actually DO art projects at home, in fact Ill be launching an Etsy shop later this week, with hand-painted journals and also Tshirts through zazzle. So al this working has really helped me with my creative energy but I find that I’m running out of ideas. At home, I like to keep the home decorating, arts & entertainment and history and discovery channels on so I can hear them and peek at the screen as I walk past. But at work, I was finding myself starved for new images. How often can you flip through the same magazines? Additionally, it’s a bit difficult to flip through magazines when you’re supposed to be working, right? It’s much easier to just turn the TV on and look at it like a picture on the wall with images that change frequently. I find that having access to those changing images calms my mind, keeps it from wandering and actually makes me more productive because I can focus. Maybe I’m crazy.
Luckily there are a lot of options for setting up television in in office. Direct Tv for hospitals and direct tv for lobby services are designed to offer the channels that are in the highest demand, and generally safe for all audiences. Direct TV is known for having good commercial deals, even though most people are only familiar with their residential plans. And I find that it’s really a good idea to have the TV in the waiting room, because it makes people feel like they’re not waiting as long. And also, in a medical setting, it helps people relax so that they’re not stressed out or worried about their procedure. Sometimes, people don’t want to talk to others in the waiting room, because of privacy concerns, and the TV allows everyone to be distracted without the burden of talking to one another when it might be embarrassing or uncomfortable.
I had to check out RedBubble because when I first heart of it, it was described as “When flickr and etsy have a baby”
The site owners say that ”over the last 3 years RedBubble has shipped 352,700 items of art! We take care of all the hassle. Give us your digital file and we will turn it into the finished product, deliver it to your customer and take care of any customer service problems. You control the pricing of your work – and decide how much you’d like to be paid (RedBubble doesn’t charge a commission – we charge a simple base price).”
This is a bit different than the Cafe Press Model, which gives creators pre-set price ranges to choose from and Etsy, which doesn’t create a finished product. When I heard of this project, it was in the context of a photographer and digital artist who was wanting a place where she could sell her photos, as prints. I was surprised to also find poetry on the site. After browsing around a little while, I think Liquid Love might be my favorite
As I investigated further, though, I was impressed with the awards RedBubble has received. The simple, clean layout of their site is powerful.
The round, red bubble favicon looks too much like About.com, though. I don’t see much of a way around that, though. How can a red bubble not be represented by a round, red circle?
I’ve had this habit, over the years, of collecting curriculum. At a certain point, it was manageable. We’re radical unschoolers, so there’s no way i’d force my kids to use the textbooks, I just felt, for a while, that we “should” have them in the house in case the kids WANTED to use them.
We’re preparing to embark upon a road trip of huge proportions, in fact I’m blogging about it at GypsyMom.com. the short version of the story is that we plan to spend about a year in our RV, powered by veggie oil, visiting family all over the country and checking out some national parks, major cities and historical sites along the way.
 Reuse your homeschool math workbooks Anyway- we can’t take all this STUFF with us, so I’ve been selling a bunch of books on Amazon.com, including homeschooling curricula, children’s readers and other fiction and nonfiction books.
But- I can’t really list the workbooks that are half-worked-in, or the ancient textbooks that are outdated, or things with rips or missing pages, know what I mean?
 activities with old textbooks So of course- we’re cutting them up and using them for art projects. My kids had so much fun gluing the fake money onto their pictures. They’d never seen a 50 cent piece in real life, so that was interesting. Also, my 4 yr old was so annoyed that all of the bills in the kindergarten workbook were ones, there were no fives or tens So we had a big long talk about how silly it is to LEAVE OUT entire denominations like that. We’re radical unschoolers, this is how we learn. By the time we cracked open the 4th grade textbook, the kids were clamoring for 5′s and 10′s and we imagined that if we had a high school book they’d get to have 20′s and 100′s. Imagine their surprise to see that the high school books had no illustrations at all. Graphic design fail?
 crafts with old math books Anyways, I put some of the fake money aside in my folder to use for collages or a vision board. The project in the picture was my 2 yr old’s. She enjoyed learning the names of each coin and gluing them into place.
This activity was way more fun than poring over boring workbooks, counting fake money. Every time my 2 yr old finds a coin now, she says “I got a nickel” or “I found my penny” and she’s usually right. When she doesn’t know the name, she asks. I feel sorry for the poor kindergarteners who don’t know beyond the one dollar bill. I plan to go back through the texts to cut more pictures out, but today they were all about the money.
I always cut out words from magazines, phrases that I like from advertisements and things like that. I use them in mixed media, decoupage, collage, etc.
I used to store them in an envelope but I found myself DREADING the idea of opening it up to find that ONE word I was looking for.
To make matters worse, I even stopped cutting things out because I didn’t want to make the envelope fatter. then I just stopped using words altogether, because the whole thing was just a big headache to deal with. Words inspire me. I keep a personal journal for my own sanity and “the words write themselves” is the best way I can think of to describe how the words just spill out when I’m feeling crazy.
So in a stroke of genius, I grabbed a notebook with a bunch of clear-pocket pages, for collecting baseball cards. I used to use it for storing grocery coupons, but since we stopped eating foods with the Frankenstein Factor, we don’t use coupons anymore.
I was thinking of alphabetizing them or something, but this will work for now. I love that I can SEE them, the colors, the font and the words, easily. If I fill up l the sections, I’ll add a black card into each pocket and use the backsides of each pocket, too.
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