Oh, but OF COURSE! Let's face it, there's a Yahoo group for everything. http://monthlydishclothkal.blogspot.com/ There's a link to join the group there, plus the pictures of the previous projects. Bonus: with only a few rows posted each day, you rarely lose your place (or lose yourself to knitting). ;)

I think that sums up a 3-month washcloth nicely. :D Yes, I think adding a handknit cloth to a basket of kitchen or bath goodies is lovely and IME always well received. In a kitchen basket, you can add wonderful dish soap, a kitchen candle, hand scrub (salt or sugar, coffee grounds, olive or sweet almond oil, fragrance oil - I like orange). In a bath basket, soap or shower gel, a candle, etc. (By the way, do you know about the Monthly Dishcloth knit-a-long Yahoo group?)

My favorite is Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions. I'm not sure that the recipes would be what you're looking for, but it definitely puts you in the mindset of creating with whole ingredients.

I vote for the electrical problem. I'm really sensitive to flickering lights - stopped having migraines, in fact, when I stopped working routinely in an office - and I have no trouble with the new CF bulbs. They're sometimes a little dim when I first turn them on, if the room is cold, but there is never flickering. We even have dimmable ones in our dining room chandelier and they're great, dim smoothly, and whatnot. My ex put the old ones in the lamps 17 years ago, and those made me nauseous. These, not so much.

No, but I don't think - as others have commented - most of their programming is appropriate for children.

I can't speak to what's in Pledge floor cleaner, but there is nothing wrong with oil in wood cleaning products. The oil would probably give a mottled appearance to a urethane or acrylic finish (I mean not uniformly shiny, not discolored), though, since it wouldn't really "stick" all that well. However, silicone will infiltrate any little scratches in the finish and will cause you to have to sand much further during the refinishing process. And Murphy's Oil Soap does not contain oil. It is MADE from oil, as opposed to tallow, as soaps (not detergents) are traditionally made. The "oil" part of the name was included to differentiate that. Personally, I love my Dyson on our hardwood. My mother's Miele is ghastly in comparison.

We have two Keltys and love them for hiking or long walks. DO NOT chintz on the "features" with a frame pack. You need the waist and chest straps. Also, if you're getting one (we had one when the 7 y.o. was little, then added the other so we could hike with the boys) Kelty makes one (or more) that has an adjustable back height (the frame itself), which we found really handy for switching off, since my husband is a full foot taller than me. If you don't want a frame pack, I would suggest the Ergo. We have friends who use them with heavier tots and they seem very comfortable for all involved.

Was it part of Fit Nation? http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/fit.nation/ The video links are down at the bottom.

I love the cooking, the planning, blending the new and the "expected"... And, this year, I was quite tickled to realize I spent two whole days of my life procuring and preparing nothing but orange food. Orange. All of it. Very strange.:001_huh:

Yes! It was in that Gourmet magazine annual cookies from the 1940s-present I think. Bugger. It's cottage cheese... though you could probably substitute ricotta. 1962. http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/cookies/1960s (actually, if you Google "ricotta cookies" there are, evidently 612,000 pages referencing such. Huh. Scary.)

Don't forget the two wackos that killed each other in a gun fight in a Toys-R-Us. :eek: Middle of the night, a bazillion freaks, all hopped up on "deal crack"... Count me in the "Not just no: He** no!" category.

I think it would depend on your ductwork. Running fans does equalize the heat in the house, so the rooms would be more uniformly warm... but, if you're running a heat-pump fan, you're recirculating the air, sucking it through the returns, through the heat pump and blowing it back through the vents. So, if the duct work from your returns run through an unheated crawlspace, you would be cooling the air on its way back to the heat pump. While the heating mechanism is running, that's fine, but if only the fan is on, it would be constantly cooling off the house. There are probably more efficient ways of distributing and conserving heat - ceiling fans on the winter setting, little doorway-corner fans that blow heat around, closing vents (and doors!) in unused rooms... Though I am a big fan of hte programable thermostat! (And they are REALLY easy to install.)

I just sent one... did you get it? Is it possible there's a typo in your email address in your profile? Like a leading or trailing space?

Yep, that's what I do, too, unless it's cold pies. For chilled pies (like a chocolate cream or whatever) I sweeten with a little confectioner's sugar and pile it on the pies and return them to the fridge. The corn starch in the sugar makes the whipped cream a little more stable that way. I have no idea whether you could freeze and scoop whipped cream like Cool Whip... mainly because whipped cream's not, you know, plastic or anything.:ack2:

:iagree: It's doubtful that she'll remember how. (When my boys weaned at 3 1/2, they did so literally because they forgot how... like they hadn't nursed the day before?!?!) But it giving it a whirl might make her feel better about the baby in "her" territory.

I cut mine into either wedges or 1/4" sticks, toss them with olive oil and seasoning (we like chili powder, cumin and a dash of cinnamon) and then bake them on parchment or a Silpat on 400 - 450, depending on how thick they are (wedges would get the lower heat). I prefer the parchment because it seems to be the best balance of non-stick and browning from the hot metal of the sheet pan. Silpats seem to damp the direct heat a bit, if that makes sense. It's a take-off from a recipe from Cooking Light.

If that's the case, you have two options: negotiate repayment amounts and schedules, or file Chapter 7. I would use "plan B" to punctuate my point in discussing "plan A". If you can negotiate the debt down to half, would that be more workable over the same 15 year schedule? ETA: It's hard to have integrity sometimes, because every impulse you have is telling you to basically shoot yourself in the foot. Don't. Your family needs security. Your family needs you. They come first. And there is no shame in a failed business. It's unfortunate, but not shameful.

No, I think the Sienna still has a larger extra seat. Friends of ours just bought a new one and I think that was their decision factor. I can sit in mine (with a carseat on either side) comfortably, though it wouldn't be for someone larger than me. Definitely, if you have multiple adults riding, you would want the larger seat. In our case, I only use it when a friend and I carpool places, in which case it fits a booster, or a bigger kid without a booster, comfortably between the boys' carseats. (Also, regarding "good" engines, I didn't mean to imply anything against Toyota engines. I meant that it came down to the economy feature the Honda had. Either of them will run pretty much forever. :D)

Ok, please note that I am NOT a minivan person. Our long-standing joke was that they were all automatics so you could drive over youself if anyone made you drive one. We looked at the Quest, Sienna and Odyssey in '05 before we bought. Quest: It was a novelty and got decent reviews. The seats are huge! Seriously large seats. Otherwise, I found the available models 1) ugly (think orange, tiger-striped leather) and 2) cheap. Add to that the rude sales manager, the salesman who didn't want to really show us the van (in his defense, did I mention the orange, tiger-striped leather seats?) and the fact that the demo wouldn't start, and we were outta there. Sienna: My husband's aesthetic preference. He liked the burled "wood" accents, and preferred the dash configuration. I wasn't terribly keen on the 8th, removable seat - it seemed difficult to get out. I was less happy that side-impact airbags were tied to a package with IIRC the entertainment package or something. This has since changed. It drove very nicely and the seats were comfortable for both of us, with a foot height discrepancy. I also like how Toyota cleverly hid the side door tracks in the window trim. Odyssey: My aesthetic preference. I liked the brushed metal accents and preferred the dash configuration. The 8th seat was easy to remove and the 2nd row captains seats were easy to reconfigure to give 3rd row access either from the passenger's side or the center. All airbags were standard, and the Odyssey has a feature whereby three of the six cylinders turn off when you reach a "cruising" speed, which can be any speed, as long as you are not accelerating. Also drove nicely. The prices for the two contenders were similar, once we packaged up seat warmers and all those airbags. The only thing I find annoying about it is that Honda isn't Bluetooth compatible, or at least, they still weren't up to 2007. In reality, I couldn't use the technology anyway, with three kids in the car. That, and the fact that all of them seem to have inextricably linked seat warmers to leather upholstery (which I dislike, but I dislike a cold bum more) were the only buggery things. We ended up buying the Honda, because I really wanted the "good" engine. Also, I think the Honda service might be slightly less expensive, but that's from informal conversations with friends, so I do not know that to be fact or whether it is a dealer difference or what. Clear as mud, right?

I use Growing With Grammar, Spencerian Penmanship and Math Mammoth - blue series. For both grammar and math, each lesson is set up with the "point" of the lesson, directions for the work, and examples (in grammar, the instruction book is separate). For penmanship, there is a very concise line of instruction, with arrows, etc., at the top of each practice page. If she needs any clarification, she either comes in and asks or sets aside that subject and moves on to the next, until we're done with circle time. Neither happens very often, maybe once a month or so.

My 3rd grader's day looks something like: 8:00 Grammar 8:15 Handwriting 8:30 Spelling 9:00 Math 9:30 Piano practice (though, in reality, she practices piano more than once a day - it's just a productive break from seat work for her) 10:00 French Then the kids play and have lunch and quiet time. We do history and/or science, and Latin in the afternoon because these are more "fun", hands-on and project-y subjects. We don't really spend more than an hour in the p.m. though. Geography is in there, somewhere, but she usually finishes up grammar and handwriting before the allotted time, so she does it then, waiting for me to be ready for spelling. You'll notice that, other than questions or spelling lists, the early morning work is of the self-directed variety - we use programs that have clear, grade appropriate instructions in every lesson - and that is by design. I have 4 y.o. twins and usually do circle time with them while Bailey is doing her grammar and handwriting. eta: and, yes, I have been known to turn on a show for the boys while we are engaged in a lesson, on days when they can't seem to play nicely/quietly together.

:iagree: That said, I've used havarti, smoked gouda, smoked mozzarella, colby... Jack would be good, and would melt very nicely. I also like to stuff chicken breasts with cheese and spinach.

Categorically, I would say beware of anything that you have to buy special mixes for. When my 7 y.o. was about 4, she got an Easy-Bake oven and the mixes were a) expensive, b) disgusting and c) didn't cook properly. We did pull it out by getting a book of recipes that called for actual food ingredients specifically for the EBO, though. I agree that a 9 y.o. would probably get much more enjoyment from a Betty Crocker mix and a set of decorating tips.

Oh. Yum. Thanks!! Mandamom, try this one http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/cookies/1940s then click on the various decades to see those... I had to click twice, for whatever reason.

It's going to rise in the refrigerator no matter what. I'd make the dough and slap it in the fridge, then take it out and punch it down, shape the rolls and let them rise on the counter on Thanksgiving.