Done. Hope she gets all the responses she needs.

Thanks. Not completed yet. We have the house painted and several pieces of furniture ready - mostly just painting already made pieces for that. I've been working harder on the graveyard for beside the house, and now that my daughter is home from college we hope to get that done soon. Lots of components are ready we just have to get it laid out and the trees, grass, etc. positioned.

I have been painting frames for the recently repainted living room walls - only took us 20 years or so to update them. Working on an electric chair for our Addams family dollhouse. The cat made off with the other arm restraint, so I am working on more wires and the switch..

My dd is flying into Seattle and then traveling onto Victoria and Vancouver over her spring break with a small honors class from her college. She asked me today if I could ask "the board" for any recommendations for restaurants with a good selection of gluten free food or bookstores in the areas that she'll be visiting. The group will have some time to do what they want one or two afternoon sin each location, and she'd love to find something she can eat other than salads . I am assuming that there will be a lot of gluten free options in the cities, but if there is anything really great she'd love to try it. Since no one else in their group of less than 15 is gluten free, she'd love to have an idea of places to watch for so she can have some hot food occasionally. This is her first trip to the west coast as well as her first trip out of the country, so she's super excited but just a little nervous about food. She's not celiac, but gluten intolerant. Independent bookstores/used/antique bookstores will definitely be on the top of her list for things to look for on her free time, and she'd love personal recommendations if you have any. In Seattle, she''ll be staying on 5th Ave (sort of near the Bill Gates Foundation) and I'm sure public transportation will be available to her. In Vancouver, she'll be near English Bay - also assuming easy access to public transportation. I forgot that they will be in Victoria at least one night in the Blanshard area of downtown, so ideas for that area would be appreciated as well. Thanks for any ideas. I will pass them on to her. She definitely understands the power of the Hive. 😉 Cindy

Saw it today with 18 yr old dd and her good friend. Both girls and I enjoyed it. It was a beautiful film. I knew I would cry - I always do-, but I definitely agree that the chronology of this film made the rejection and Beth's fate more central. I cried for a lot of the movie. 😉 I liked a lot of things about this one. I saw the Ryder version in the theatre in the 90s and enjoyed the recent BBC version. It's been many years since I saw the Elizabeth Taylor/Margaret O'Brien version. I thought the actress playing Jo did a good job - different than the exuberant version of Jo in the WR version - but believable and still accurate to the book. Amy was always my favorite and I liked the actress that played her in many ways, but still trying to decide if it would have been preferable to have a younger actress play her in a few scenes.

Love Most Notorious! and can't wait to try True Crime Historian. Love reading through old newspapers, so this sounds like great fun.

In Our Time: History (BBC Radio) Stuff You Missed in History Class

This is us now. We have a cat that will eat any type of tulle, ribbon, mesh or lace he can get to. Our tree is only decorated on the top half and the stockings (all handmade by my 18 yr old and each has lace) had to be hung at the last minute and guarded carefully until they were empty and then stored away again. My oldest taped a photo of Baby Yoda on top of the tree because the angel is so tempting we are afraid he would climb up and eat her dress. A trip to the emergency vet for a blockage is not my idea of holiday fun. (The cat is 3 years old and he has had 3 surgeries for blockages so far.)

Yes, he will have to include everyone's income.

Sorry you weren't able to find anything, but wanted to thank you for mentioning the illustrated edition HPs were on there. I ordered those as I was planning to get them for the girls anyway, and I found most of my 18 year old dd's book list on there so I placed several more orders.

My dd was a ballet dancer at the time of her first period and had to use tampons from day one. She used the smallest sized Playtex Sport brand - never had any trouble with them.

My 21 year old dd and I are planning to do it. We were logging into our NANOWRIMO accts tonight to get ready. I've tried it before and struggled when I got behind and then just sort of got overwhelmed and gave up. We are trying to be more mindful when choosing our word count this time.

It is a small porch that my husband screened in this spring. The outside is actually painted to match the house - we didn't paint the inside because we knew they would scratch the posts and they do. They have a blanket on the other side and a small house on the rug to the left. We don't leave them out there when we aren't home though because I am worried that the little demon would escape through the screen somehow. 😉 It's not visible in the photo but we have bird feeders near the wood sided building across the driveway. I am convinced that the birds have figured out that the cats can't reach them because they like to perch in the bushes on either side of the porch which creates instant CAT TV.

Terrorist is a good name for one of our kitties. We usually call him a demon although my youngest named him for an angel from her favorite TV show. I love him so much, but he is the worst cat we have ever had - we currently have 5 inside cats. He is three years old now and I have no hope he is going to outgrow his bad behaviors now. 😉 He chews on all kinds of things and has had 3 surgeries to remove fabric/lace/and a dryer sheet from his stomach. I recently caught him chewing the corner of our dresser for no apparent reason. He bullies the other cats. He bites and scratches. When he wants petted and loved he must have it, even if that means waking me up at 3:30 am to pet him a while. He tries to get outside even though he has a huge catio my dh built for all of them this spring. He was dumped out of a car around 3-4 weeks and a friend found him sitting on the yellow lines in the middle of the road. He has been loved and adored since then, and is not afraid of anything. PS The photo is of him laying down so sweetly with his favorite toy. That sheep has been with him since we first brought him home and he still carries it around a good bit. He will take it to the catio or into the laundry room where the litter boxes are, and into window sills so it can help him watch for us when we are away from home or even just outside. He hates to be left alone.

I think her flower box and curtains turned out great! Glad you two are enjoying it. Miniatures were something my youngest and I have wanted to do for a while, but just never had time or space. We are working on a cemetery to go beside our haunted house. If your gd would be interested in painting or staining some furniture, our local dollar stores sometimes carry unfinished wooden furniture. I bought some to practice painting/finishing techniques on and it will be fine as a place holder type thing until we can get what we want later. I used half of a cocoa box, an egg carton, paint, mod podge, and spackling for the fireplace. The spackling was the only thing I had to purchase (the top is just a scrap of wood I stained with walnut stain I already had). I've made flooring and wallpaper with brown packaging paper, glue, water and some stain or paint. I am having fun with it, and I wouldn't consider myself crafty at all.

My 18 yr old and I started remodeling a dollhouse as a haunted house/Addams family house type of thing 6 months ago. Now that she's away at college, I am trying to keep up with it and work on little pieces. I made a fireplace for the kitchen and now hope to make or find a cauldron type pot to hang in it with some creepy type of concoction brewing. I saw an eyeball stew type thing on Etsy that my oldest and I might try to recreate. Anyway, I thought I'd share. I am not a crafty type person, but I've always loved miniatures and I can't afford to buy most of the ones I like so I guess I will learn to be crafty. 😉

I'm with some of the earlier posters - in that I am not comfortable with sharing IRL now that they are adults. I can't believe that the baby is 18 and away at college. 2 girls - ages 21 and 18. I'd love an invite.

Voted for your friend. There were lots of adorable designs.

I watched it. It was brutal in so many ways, but I felt like I needed to see it. I then spent more time reading online about the case, the boys, Ms. Fairstein, etc. I loved that it gave little up dates on the boys ( now men) at the end. Not to spoil anything, but seeing those helped me deal with the many emotions swarming around at the end of the program.

I'd be interested in this info, also. My 18 yr old dd was just researching Rover as a possible part time job for the summer.

So sorry. It is rough when they are older and I know how hard it is when time slips away from our busy college age kids. Vent away. I think that your dd sounds a lot like my oldest (a junior in college) and she just didn't realize how fast time is passing or feels that she needs to support her friend and is probably wishing to come home and see you, too. Hope you can get some studying done, and enjoy the time you do get with her tonight.

Done. Good luck to him.

My wild child is now 18 and has ADD, but not as severe as her older sister who was much calmer as a toddler. Go figure. My difficult one has been an angel as a teenager though. We dealt with not sleeping through the night until the age of three, sensitivity issues ( socks were a nightmare until we found seamless socks), speech issues, giving up naps at 18 months, etc. it makes me want to cry just thinking about it. I understand, I truly do, and I hope it will get better in a year or two for you as it did here. As she neared the age of 3 it was like a light switch flipped and although she was still super active, she began to behave better -less climbing the shelves in the library and fewer stunts like using her little chair to get on to the stove and then dragging the chair on the stove to get on top of the refrigerator - that was right around 18 months on a day I was having tummy trouble and spending more than the 30 seconds I usually allowed my self in the bathroom without her. I aged that day. 😉 My parents would keep both girls for a weekend, and they would be completely exhausted with a trashed house at the end of it and my mom would always say she'd put her up against any set of twin toddlers in the world. (My parents were great sports about it - their only 2 grandchildren were my dds, and 3-4 times a year they begged to have them so we could have a break. ) Your little one sounds extremely intelligent and like my daughter it sounds like she can figure out ways to get whatever she wants. No outlet protectors or cabinet locks could stop our little one for long. Our house is less than 1000 square feet, and I think we must have always lived in chaos those years. She would cry when we picked up toys and pull them out as fast a possible. My Tasmanian devil mouthed things way past the time we thought she should - but once the worst of that was over we had rice in tubs with toy scoops and cars and funnels. I'd take an old sheet or blanket and put it on the floor in an attempt to keep the mess contained. We spent her first few summers without ac so I'd plop her in a cool bath once or twice a day with a multitude of bath toys and sing along with Wee Sing cassettes or whatever she liked best while I attempted to clean the other areas of the small bathroom. If you have a dual sink and she's stable enough to stand in a chair fill on side with a little water and a lot of dish soap so you have lots of foamy bubbles let her wash her play dishes or tea set while you wash your dishes in the other side. Yes it's messy and we used too much water, but I tried to justify it with cloth diaper use and using the bath water to water plants when practical. Since you are stuck indoors, I encourage you to use the cartoons or shows she enjoys when necessary - for mine it was The Magic School Bus because that was her older sister's favorite. Coloring on a large dry erase board, bouncing on an small trampoline in the house, playing in forts built with the living room furniture with her sister and our cats, are all things that we did often when stuck in the house in cold or rainy weather. Remember you are a great mom, and this will pass, but pursue any appointments or specialists you feel you need to refer with because I think an attentive mother is usually right about theses things. I had to push for hearing and speech intervention for ours. Her hearing was fine only selective. 😉 But we were glad we pushed because early intervention was crucial for her speech progressing so quickly. So pursue what you feel is necessary, doctors only see them for a few minutes at a time and these are cases where momma usually knows best.

My dd and I are catching up on the 3rd season of Wanted on Netflix. It's an Australian show about two female fugitives, and each season only has around 6 episodes or so. Really binge worthy, we've been waiting to watch this season for a couple of months because we knew we'd want to watch it all in a day or two.

Would you mind sharing the ASL channel that you use? My daughter is taking an ASL class once a week, but is looking for a good source to help her review and learn more. I don't know enough to help her find something accurate. Thanks. You can PM me if this is too off topic for this thread. Don't want to derail the book talk. 😉