Easter swap riches and local fishes

Oh joy! My Easter swap partner, Raesha, sent me a box full of Easter happiness, including this fabulous banner and...
...many pastel delights! I have to admit that this photo is a recreation of the "just opened" box that is in fact missing a number of things; Dean and I were so excited that we started right in on the chocolates, and I started decorating immediately before remembering to gather back up what I could to take a picture. That flowery fabric you see on the bottom is a vintage pillow case that's been converted into a shopping bag -- fabulous! I had to laugh at the similarity my swap partner and I had in putting our boxes together; I'm anxious for hers to arrive on her doorstep (not many days left, and I mailed it on the 10th!) and hope she likes everything as much as I've enjoyed what she sent.

In other exciting news, a friend of ours (the dad of one of Dean's school friends) has had his book published! The Naturalist's Guide to the Atlantic Seashore is the perfect guide for anyone who spends time on the beaches from Maine (that's us!) to North Carolina. The text and photos are totally accessible to a non-scientist and yet, given that the author is a professor at Wheaton College, it all stands up as solid science. Homeschoolers in this area would get a tremendous amount of use out of this book, as would vacationers or weekend day-trippers. It's exciting to see someone you know become so successful as a published writer.

In like a lion

Ah, the weekend. Saturday morning. How magnificent. Snowing, as it has been for most of the night. In New England March does reliably come in like a lion, but often leaves like one too. Finishing up my second cup of coffee and my toasted cheese sandwich (breakfast of champions).

As usual, Helen has got me thinking. Her 2/28 post gives her definition of a good blog and it's the helpful kind of kick in the pants I need to keep me on track. Our definitions of a good blog may vary a bit (naturally), but hers overlaps mine enough to push me in the right direction.

She's also tagged me with the 7 random/weird things about yourself deal, and Natalie tagged me -- what, a million years ago? -- for a series of 8's. I'll start with Natalie's, since she was way first and since I did start my answers way back (I'll try to finish up as I go):

8 things I am passionate about:
My husband and son
Being honorable
Being kind
Being punctual
Nature, the environment
Making things
Disney World
Belief in the power we all wield in our own lives and in the world at large

8 things to do before I die:
Tell everyone I love that I love him or her (here I mean that I think it's important to say it every time, every chance, just in case)
Make many more quilts
Learn to knit
Touch each of the Great Lakes (only have Michigan so far)
Finish more scrapbooks
See my son all grown up and happy
Forgive
Figure out what my contribution is supposed to be, and make it

8 things I often say:
Wonderful!
Really?
Hop-tooey-louie (it means hurry up)
Come and look at (the sky) (the moon) (the stars)
Can I get anybody anything?
No, you can do that yourself.
Can you put that away?
I love you

8 books I have recently read:
Julie and Julia
The Apprentice
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Life of Pi
How to Be Like Walt
The Imagineering Field Guide to Animal Kingdom
Cesar's Way
Eating Korean

8 songs I could listen to over and over again:
Grey Funnel Line
Mining for Gold
Amazing Grace
Simple Gifts
Baba O'Riley
100 Years
When You're Falling
Zippity do-da (please watch, and see it for the gentle goodness and not for racial stereotyping!)

8 things that attract me to my best friends: (but this is just conjecture!)
Once I know your birthday, I'll always send a card
I will be on time
You can count on a good meal from me
I'll always listen, and I won't give advice unless you ask
I don't take myself too seriously
I'll support you in whatever it is you want to do, even if I've told you my opinion about it (and it's different from yours)
I'll love your children if you have them, and I won't tell you that you should have them if you don't (because I don't believe that)
Odds are good that I can make you laugh from time to time

That seems like a lot for today. So I'll tackle Helen's 7 things tomorrow. Meanwhile, rather than tagging, I will say that if making a list like this intrigues you, please go for it and let me know so I can come and read yours!

Worth reading

I used to read all the time. I've loved books ever since being read to as a child, and I believe that reading is one of life's pure pleasures. And yet, reading is one of the things I rarely make the time to do anymore. Getting out of the habit as at first the fault of my work; I started my career as an editor and proofreader at a small publishing company and so I had to read, letter-by-letter closely, almost all day long. I will tell you that this makes picking up a book at the end of the day pretty much the last thing you'd want to do. For the next -- what? -- well, 16 years or so my work entailed writing, editing, and proofreading. Meanwhile, I lost my taste for the current fiction of the day. I don't know when it was decreed that every piece of contemporary fiction had to include at least one mind-numbingly horrific scene, but it seemed to me as though no one were capable of writing any kind of a story that didn't include real violence against children, or women, or both, or sometimes men but usually when they were children. Every life seemed to have child abuse in the past. Is it just me? I couldn't find much I enjoyed and I burned out on all my classic standbys (classic English lit., then people like Ann Tyler and Marge Percy, Roddy Doyle -- oh, there were others I 'discovered' then read everything she/he had written). I got more into non-fiction and still love a biography and can read a cookbook as though it were a novel. Craft books don't count for these purposes....

But the truth is that I haven't read much (for myself) for the past few years, other than Harry Potter. So I was delighted when my friend Lisa loaned me Julie and Julia and The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pepin. Thanks to a number of winter colds and freezing days at home, I managed to read both this year. For me, two books (plus one more, hang on) in two months IS something to write about. I suspect most of you would enjoy Julie and Julia, since it's a book by a blogger. Her blog got discovered and from it came the book deal; I may be the last of us to have read this book but if you haven't heard of it, she decides to spend a year cooking ALL of the recipes from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Even if you aren't that interested in cooking, the way her blog changes her life will intrigue you. Books like this -- written by hip young things living in New York City -- always make me feel a bit dowdy and out of it, but I felt that way even when I was a young thing myself so maybe it's just a fundamental style difference. But I don't think you'd be disappointed if you picked it up at your library. The Jacques Pepin autobiography is astonishing. Again, even if you're not big on cooking you will be captivated by his story and glad YOU didn't grow up in France during WWII.

And yesterday I finished reading a book my neighbor lent me -- Cesar's Way by Cesar Millan. Stay with me on this one. Maybe you've seen his show on the National Geographic Channel -- The Dog Whisperer? Anyway. Even if you don't have a dog, even if you do have a dog but aren't a fan of his show, or if there's any chance you think you might one day get a dog, or maybe if you had one at some point in your life, or maybe if you'd like some insights into your relationships with your family members (seriously), I recommend this book. Oh sure, I promised this wasn't going to turn in to an all-dog blog, and I'm standing by that. But I think you'll be just blown away by his insights into human psychology AND dog psychology; I am telling you that I've thought about my upbringing and about my relationship with Ken and how I function at work and how we're raising Dean (let alone how we're attempting to integrate a puppy into our lives) in an entirely. new. light. This is NOT a book about how to house-train a puppy. It is a book about fundamentally understanding the role that leadership and about the act of following a leader play in our lives. No kidding. (added bonus: the dog IS listening to me.)

Just trying to make it

So maybe you, too, succumbed to the lure of The Cute Book, and maybe you, too, have had it on your shelf but haven't quite had time to do anything with it. Well, I'm here to tell you that this little panda (page 12!) came together in no time at all, so you should open the book and try something out. I've made some little countdown treats for Dean's lunch box this week (counting down until Halloween, of course); I loved that last week on the way home from school one day, Dean reminisced about our tradition that we "always" countdown to holidays with lunch box surprises. Kids are like that -- they'll take something you've done that they liked and instantly turn it into tradition. It delights me. And it reminds me how worthwhile it is to pick up some felt and thread and make things. I wish I could show you the hamster I made (complete with a mask and "trick or treat" banner), but that guy is too big to be scanned -- and now Blogger doesn't want to let me post anymore photos so I'll have to try again tomorrow.

Happy Trails

If by any chance you are casting about for summer reading material, I cannot more highly recommend this book -- Heidi's Alp. It's non-fiction -- an account of a family's summer travels across Europe in search of locations mentioned in or that inspired some classic fairy tales. I re-read this regularly. If you happen to live in or near Europe, all the more reason to read it since you have a very real opportunity to then check out some of these places yourself. The link that I made on the book's title, above, takes you to an Amazon page where this book is currently available used for as little as one penny. A penny! Give yourself or a dear friend a real treat.

Speaking of travel, this is likely to be my last post for a little while as we pack up for our own little summer vacation. Oh, I'll be back before you know it, before June is out. We head out bright and early tomorrow morning, assuming I get everything packed up this afternoon. We'll be calling each other by our Hobbit names, or maybe by our elven names, the whole time.

If you're looking for some quilt project ideas, I'd like to share a site that's new to me: Quilter's Home magazine. I was impressed by the quality of their free patterns -- not the usual stuff. I've never seen this magazine on the stands but will keep an eye open for it -- it seems pretty fresh.