This is where I sit if I need a desk in the school area. It was totally covered in stuff. Better!



This is the school area. I rearranged and straightened this week. Still have some tweaking, but much better than it was.







This is the counter area when you first walk in the door to the kitchen from the garage. It is a huge catch all for junk. Here is the before picture.



This is another catch all for junk. It is in the eating area in the kitchen. Any ideas for what to do with it to make it look better?



This is the after of the counter. I have the stuff in a pile waiting to be sorted this afternoon. There are a couple of appliances to the left of the microwave. There is nowhere else to store them currently. To the right, is a recipe basket and a couple of pottery pieces. Does this look okay or do you have a better idea of how to utilize this space?

Most of my knitting this week has been on this pair of socks. It is a new technique for me. Two at a time and on two circular needles. It is a pretty cool way to do socks! The yarn is Berroco Comfort Sock. The pattern is Snake River, which I found on Ravelry. W. very kindly helped separate the yarn into 2 equal weight piles and wound them into nice balls for me. After I started knitting, I realized that the were going to be inverse twins! The mirror image doesn't go left to right, but top to bottom. Kind of cool!




This one is also on two circulars, but one at a time. The yarn is Crystal Palace Panda Cotton made with bamboo, cotton, and nylon. I love this yarn. The feel of it on the foot is wonderful! I am doing Snake River on this sock as well. I like the pattern and thought it would lend well to both yarns.

This was posted on the boards I frequent (okay, I don't just frequent, I live there). How long have you used these products without having known this information? Umm, how about, forever! Sigh. I feel like a great big doofus for not having noticed before being told. Anyway, here you go. Time to revolutionize your kitchen!


"I've been using aluminum foil for more years than I care to remember. Great stuff, but sometimes it can be a pain. You know, like when you are in the middle of doing something and you try to pull some foil out and the roll comes out of the box. Then you have to put the roll back in the box and start over. The darn roll always comes out at the wrong time.

Well, I would like to share this with you. Yesterday I went to throw out an empty Reynolds foil box and for some reason I turned it and looked at the end of the box. And written on the end it said, "Press here to lock end". Right there on the end of the box is a tab to lock the roll in place. How long has this little locking tab been there? I then looked at a generic brand of aluminum foil and it had one, too. I then looked at a box of Saran wrap and it had one too! I can't count the number of times the Saran wrap roll has jumped out when I was trying to cover something up."

PariSarah has initiated a challenge on her blog. The information below has been copied from her site and pasted here. This will be a great way to learn about your area's flora and fauna and to teach your kids (if you have them) in the process. I will be doing this as part of our science lessons and will begin next week. I plan on having the kids make notebooks with samples or pictures of the plants and all the information we wish to include in our books. What a great idea. Thanks Sarah!


If you want to do the formal challenge with me, and you intend to blog about it, here are the Official Rules:

The 100-Species Challenge

1. Participants should include a copy of these rules and a link to this entry in their initial blog post about the challenge. I will make a sidebar list of anyone who notifies me that they are participating in the Challenge.

2. Participants should keep a list of all plant species they can name, either by common or scientific name, that are living within walking distance of the participant's home. The list should be numbered, and should appear in every blog entry about the challenge, or in a sidebar.

3. Participants are encouraged to give detailed information about the plants they can name in the first post in which that plant appears. My format will be as follows: the numbered list, with plants making their first appearance on the list in bold; each plant making its first appearance will then have a photograph taken by me, where possible, a list of information I already knew about the plant, and a list of information I learned subsequent to starting this challenge, and a list of information I'd like to know. (See below for an example.) This format is not obligatory, however, and participants can adapt this portion of the challenge to their needs and desires.

4. Participants are encouraged to make it possible for visitors to their blog to find easily all 100-Species-Challenge blog posts. This can be done either by tagging these posts, by ending every post on the challenge with a link to your previous post on the challenge, or by some method which surpasses my technological ability and creativity.

5. Participants may post pictures of plants they are unable to identify, or are unable to identify with precision. They should not include these plants in the numbered list until they are able to identify it with relative precision. Each participant shall determine the level of precision that is acceptable to her; however, being able to distinguish between plants that have different common names should be a bare minimum.

6. Different varieties of the same species shall not count as different entries (e.g., Celebrity Tomato and Roma Tomato should not be separate entries); however, different species which share a common name be separate if the participant is able to distinguish between them (e.g., camillia japonica and camillia sassanqua if the participant can distinguish the two--"camillia" if not).

7. Participants may take as long as they like to complete the challenge. You can make it as quick or as detailed a project as you like. I'm planning to blog a minimum of two plants per week, complete with pictures and descriptions as below, which could take me up to a year. But you can do it in whatever level of detail you like.

Good luck to all, and I am looking forward to reading all your blog entries!! I will be posting mine on Saturdays, to go along with my usual (*cough*) updates on my garden.

Even if you're only doing it informally, do leave a comment and tell me about it, or link to any of your informal blog posts on the subject. I want to hear about it!!