Baby Mouse

Matt Holm was sharing his talents and creating magic with a little mouse: Baby Mouse.

He drew pictures for the kids, having them help him come up with ideas. The kids loved it - almost as much as me. I enjoyed seeing the kids all get so excited to use their imagination and then watch it come to life with Matt's Magic Art!

It was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Baby Mouse is a Graphic Novel for kids and if you have a little one, and even if you don't, you should go to the Green Bean Bookstore and check it out. I'm sure you'll enjoy yourself.

COOTIES

So, what's a cootie? Maybe some of you remember ('cuz I sure do) this song:

I woke up Sunday morning
And there upon the wall
The cooties and the bedbugs
Were having a game of ball

The score was six to nothing
The cooties were ahead
The bedbugs hit a homerun
And knocked me out of bed!

TU-TU HOW BOUT YOU

My sis and I are going to be running in the Shamrock run on St. Paddy's weekend - March 13th. We're hoping to do the 15k or 9.3 miles. It will be the longest run I've ever ran--if I make it. And, I've been training hard for this. But, I also want it to be fun. Sew...I've been making some real running gear...

what I'm talking about is tu-tu(s) for us to wear, along with green tights and who knows what else. I'm not implying that we're going to be as graceful as ballerinas. Of course there's no hope of any mix-ups on that level.

So, how'd I do it? I went to the fabric store and bought some green mesh and ribbon, then I sewed the netting to the ribbon, and wah-lah, tu-tus for me and Tammy :)


If you want to see how they turned out, and see how we look in them, you'll have to come back around March 13...and keep your fingers X'd that I make it the entire way.

Good News

Congratulations to the finalists for the Oregon Book
Awards! (Thanks to Suz Blackaby for the list)

ELOISE JARVIS MCGRAW AWARD FOR CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

Dale E. Basye of Portland, Rapacia:The Second Circle of Heck (Random House)
Dawn Babb Prochovnic of Portland, The Nest Where I Like to Rest (Magic
Wagon)
Graham Salisbury of Lake Oswego, Calvin Coconut: The Zippy Fix (Wendy Lamb
Books)
Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen of Hines A Small Brown Dog with a Wet Pink Nose
(Little Brown and Company)
Barbara Kerley of Portland, The Extraordinary Mark Twain (Scholastic Press)

LESLIE BRADSHAW AWARD FOR YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE

Scott William Carter of Salem, The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon
Boys (Simon and Schuster)
Kerry Cohen Hoffman of Portland, It's Not You, It's Me (Random House)
Anne Osterlund of Ione, Academy 7 (Penguin Group)
L.K. Madigan of Portland, Flash Burnout (Houghton Mifflin)
Emily Whitman of Portland, Radiant Darkness (Greenwillow/Harper Collins)

AND three cheers for Barb Liles, who snagged Edna L. Holmes Fellowship in
Young Readers Literature.

Hip! Hip!

What's On Your Wall Wednesday - Framing

My husband's uncle sends us pieces of art every now-n-then. My husband frames the art and we hang it on the wall. It's beautiful.

How 'bout you, what's on your wall Wednesday?

Valentines

I love making crafts, especially if I can give them away and what better way than Valentine's Day?

The Danes use these paper hearts at Christmas, to put on the tree and fill with cookies but I like to use them as Valentine's for friends. I fill them with bath salts, bath beads and candles. It's a fun little thing to give friends.

Here's how you do it. I make both felt hearts and paper hearts, just depending on the look I want. Then I embellish them with fur, stones and buttons or anything I have laying around the house.

The Undead Series

Okay, I've always been a fanpire ever since the early days with Dracula but then when Stephen King wrote Salem's Lot, I was really hooked. I've read lots of books and the Twilight series had to join that list. Then there was the TrueBlood line-up and I've just finished the Undead series.

I loved Mary Janice Davidson's wit and humor. I'd be laughing while I was reading and my husband would say, "Isn't that a vampire book?"

I'd say, "Yeah, but it's funny."

He'd look at me like I'd finally lost my mind.

Anyway, I've read 9 or 10 of the books (all 9 in the series plus one little spin-off werewolf 'tail' :) in the Undead series. The last one, though, Undead and Unfinished (HERE'S A SPOILER ALERT)

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definitely my least favorite. It had it's moments but the ending... I did not like that. Maybe because I've been happily married for so many years (yeah 27, count 'em - that's a lot of years) and we've had our moments of anger and arguments (of course, anyone who's been married more than a year has), but we've always "made up". So................I didn't like that ending. In fact I didn't like it so much, I doubt I would buy another book in the series...but you never know. I might want to find out what could have caused such a flip in Betsy's paranormal dimension but...maybe not.

I mean I can handle the shallow silliness, the shoes, the 'sucky' parts of the story but when you murder your own husband...I have to draw the line somewhere...right?

And, then, when she skins him and uses his (un)dead body to make a book (literally), I don't know call me squimish...it just didn't seem right to do those sorts of things to your most loved one. And no wonder she went a little crazy whenever she read from that hardback - after all it was her husband's.

Anyone else read the series? What were your thoughts?

Anyway that was a disappointment :(