I have been teaching myself crochet over the last few months. I have found YouTube to be the most beneficial to learning crochet. This is the first project I have made that I am not embarrassed by. It was very easy to make, I had to adjust it slightly. I think I ended up adding 5 more rows to the hat to get it to fit my four year old. My son loves it, too bad we live in Florida where you don’t really need hats. You can find the pattern here.
I have really been trying to teach myself the ins and outs of photography, so I have been experimenting a lot and taking tons of pictures. This was the only picture in focus that I got of the rose, and it has “little people hands” in it, but I love it.
Go check out my new friend Lolli’s blog she does an amazing job.
“Women who are romance novel readers are reported to make love 74% more often with their partners than women who do not read romance novels.”
If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you request as your last meal?
Since I did a post last week about school shootings, I thought I would follow it up with a post on bullying.
As many as half of all children are bullied during their school years, and at least 10% are bullied regularly. Bullying is torment in either physical, verbal, and psychological ways. There is even “cyber bullying” now, through emails, and chat rooms.
Bullying can have a huge impact on a child’s social and emotional development, as well as their school work. Often times children will not come out and tell an adult they are being bullied, however there are some warning signs that you can look for:
If you suspect your child may be the victim of bullying ask him or her to tell you what's going on.
- Ask your child what he or she thinks should be done.
- Seek help from your child's teacher or the school guidance counselor. Most bullying occurs on playgrounds, in lunchrooms, and bathrooms, on school buses or in unsupervised halls, so it goes unnoticed.
- Don't encourage your child to fight back. Tell them to walk away or tell a teacher.
- Teach your child assertiveness
- Tell your child to stay with a group, bullies are less likely to pick on a child in a group
If your child has been being bullied for awhile , take them to see a mental health professional. Bullying can have life long emotional consequences on a child, seeking early help can lessen the affects.
Here is another recipe from the Martha Stewart’s Cookies book. These are so good, they are a very light cookie, not too sweet, a perfect summer time cookie.
Ingredients:
Mental Health Monday
A few weeks ago I had a dream, within a dream. It really puzzled me, I started wondering what is a dream, and what do they mean? I also have prophetic dreams, I have a handful of these dreams every year (yes, I am insane, just call me Miss Cleo).
Dreams happen during REM sleep. Heart rate and respiration speed up and become erratic, while the face, fingers, and legs may twitch. Intense dreaming occurs during REM sleep as a result of heightened cerebral activity, but paralysis occurs simultaneously in the major voluntary muscle groups, including the muscles of the chin and neck. A person typically has 3-5 periods of REM sleep a night. An episode of REM can last anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour.
There are many hypotheses on what the exact function of a dream is. Freud thought that bad dreams let the brain learn to gain control over emotions from distressing experiences. Jung thought that dreams may compensate for one-sided attitudes held in waking consciousness.
Many people dream about emotions, the most common being anxiety. Only 8% of men’s and women’s dreams are sex related. Some sex dreams can result in orgasm or nocturnal emission (that word really makes me giggle.) 70% of women have recurring dreams, where men only have 65%. The most common dreams include school, being chased, running slowly in place, falling, being late, a person now alive is dead or vice versa, teeth falling out, flying, future events, embarrassing moments, falling in love with random people, failing a test, not being able to move, not being able to see, car accidents, being accused of a crime you did not commit, and being naked in public, to name a few.
I have recurring dreams about my teeth breaking and falling out, the brakes going out on my car, and flying (I love those dreams).
What recurring dreams do you have?
I got tulips (or as Ro calls them, tupops) for Vday.
Send your fabulous photo to manicmotherme@gmail.com, include your name, location, and a link.
I know you are probably wondering why the hell am I posting about school shootings, but I just read Nineteen Minutes, by Jodi Picoult. The book is about a boy who is bullied his whole life, and decides to take matters into his own hands and goes on a rampage school shooting. Not unlike her other books, it is an eloquently written, easy to read book. Only Jodi Picoult could actually make you feel empathetic for a school shooter. She is an incredible author.
The first school shooting was at the University of Texas at Austin Massacre in 1966, where a student killed 14, and injured 32 more.
In 1979 a 16 year old girl shot and killed 2, and injured 8, when asked why she did it she replied, “ I don’t like Monday’s, this livens up the day.” This was after her father gave her a gun for her birthday. If you are not old enough to buy cigarettes, you certainly should not have a gun.
In 1997 a student stabbed and beat his mother to death and then drove to his school, where he killed his ex girlfriend and her friend. Moments before shooting he gave his friend this message :
"I am not insane, I am angry. I killed because people like me are mistreated every day. I did this to show society, push us and we will push back. ... All throughout my life, I was ridiculed, always beaten, always hated. Can you, society, truly blame me for what I do? Yes, you will. ... It was not a cry for attention, it was not a cry for help. It was a scream in sheer agony saying that if you can't pry your eyes open, if I can't do it through pacifism, if I can't show you through the displaying of intelligence, then I will do it with a bullet."
That gives me the chills. There was of course Columbine, in 1999 where 13 were killed, and 24 injured. The biggest and far worst of the school shootings was in 2007, at Virginia Tech, where 33 were killed and 23 injured.
The majority of these school shooters were being bullied by fellow students or parents.
This is hard for me to understand since I was never bullied as a child. Were any of you bullied? How did it affect you?
This game is best for kids 6 or older.
What you need:
- A pack of playing cards
- 2 or more players
How to play:
The goal of the game is to collect all 52 cards.
Deal out the whole deck of cards, one at a time, face down. Players are not allowed to look at their cards. Players take turns placing one card face up in a pile. If a Jack is turned up, the first player to slap the Jack takes all of the cards in the pile. The hand you use to turn your cards should also be the hand you slap with. If a player slaps a card that is not a Jack, they must give a card to every player from the bottom of their pile. If a player runs out of cards they can still slap Jacks and gain cards that way. The first player to get all the cards wins.
Mental Health Monday
In 1960 the average person got eight hours of sleep. Today the number has fallen to 6.7 hours. So what is sleep, and why do we need it? I have always been a big fan of sleep. I need a minimum of eight hours a night, any less and I feel groggy the rest of the day. If you spend eight hours a night sleeping you will sleep 1/3 of your life.
Not getting enough sleep can be detrimental to you in more then one way. One night of only 4-5 hours of sleep has affect on your attention, memory, alertness, reaction time, and the speed in which you think. It only takes 2 seconds to have a lapse, in driving a car at 60 miles an hour, to drift completely out of your lane, and you will be off the road in 4 seconds. The lapses are called “micro-sleeps”, and can even occur with your eyes open. The Exxon Valdez spill happened after midnight with a man at the helm who'd slept only four hours the night before. Don’t doze and operate heavy machinery, people.
There was a sleep study done where healthy, young patients were only allowed 4 hours of sleep for 6 nights. In just 6 nights many of the patients were already in a pre-diabetic state, and furthermore, they were hungry. There is a hormone in your brain called leptin, it tells your brain when you are full. The patients in the study showed a drop in their leptin levels, so they were hungry even though they had eaten plenty. Not enough sleep has been linked to obesity, as well as heart disease, high blood pressure, and stroke. Is not enough sleep fueling our obesity epidemic?
Have any of you ever feel asleep behind the wheel?
How many of hours of sleep a night do you get?
I guess we knew this was coming, but the woman has had a website set up for people to make donations. I feel bad for those babies, but that woman rubs me the wrong way and I would have a hard time donating my money to her. Would you donate?
Do not make these cookies as a plain sugar cookie, they are not sweet enough, but after you add frosting they are perfect.
Recipe from All Recipes
For the frosting:
For a true white frosting omit the butter, and double the shortening.
What you will need:
- A cylinder glass vase or container (I found mine at Michael's for 4.00)
- A container that will fit into your glass one and allow room for candy (I used an old can of corn)
- Tinfoil
- Conversation candy hearts ( I used 1.5 bags)
- Tulips (or any flower you like)
Directions:
Fill the can half way full with water, center it in the glass container. While holding on to the can drop the candies around it (once you get enough in there you can let go). After you have all of your candies in place, wrap tinfoil over the hearts to keep water from getting in. Arrange your flowers and remove the tinfoil. Voila, you have a beautiful floral arrangement for your sweet, for about 20 dollars.
Mental Health Monday
Ok, so some of you may debate me on the whole brilliance factor, but Axl is bipolar. Bill Bailey (no wonder he changed his name) has struggled his whole life with anger, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and the law.
Who didn’t have a crush on Axl in the 80’s? I know I shed more then one tear to November Rain. With great fashion sense like this,
what’s not to love?
Axl questions whether or not he truly is bipolar but he has a long rap sheet and fits the profile, and he did this to himself.
I don’t know what do you think? I think that is one messed up man.
I found this “lovely” dog at Goodwill for .50, I thought it would make a neat picture.
If you have a Fabulous Photo please send it to manicmotherme@gmail.com , include your name location and a link for some link love.
4 year olds say some of the most ridiculous things. With in the last week Ro has told me I have "super dyke powers", and has taken to calling me "Super Mom". Today he told me I was strong because I have nipples. I bet you didn't know I was a Super Hero.
What are some of the silly things your kids have said?
I just had to clean a man sized turd off of the bathroom floor. My 4 year old decided to poop his pants and while taking off his pants he dropped the turd, and when I went in the bathroom he had poop smeared all over himself. I so thought we were past this. Never a dull moment.
On a side note, the smell of poop is next to impossible to get off of your hands.
Here is a fun game to play on a rainy day.
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