There are Butterflies In My Sky

I wrote this post some time ago and lost track of it in my blogging software. But I ran across it in my end of year digital clean-out effort. There are a lot of iPods, iPads and iPhones that will be unwrapped in a couple of days. If there are children in viewing area of these devices in your life, please consider this app recommendation.

People always ask me about my reading and wonder how I came to love reading so much. All I can say is that I owe so much of who I am culturally to Reading Rainbow and The Catherine T. and McArthur D. Foundation that sponsored so much of the public television programming that I grew up watching.

LeVar Burton has revamped Reading Rainbow for the technology that has invaded our lives. This experience is optimized at the moment for IOS and the iPad so I won’t get to try it out, but I am excited about it none the less.

If you have children in your life, please introduce them to this little bit of our past recreated. In this crazy world we live in, they need a few butterflies in their sky.

Another Wedding Hair Option

I’ve been continuing to comb the YouTube for wedding day hair options. Since my hair has gotten a little longer since I found the styles I mentioned

here

and

here

, I will be spending the month of October playing around in my hair more and more until I get things figured out.

But for now, I am still clipping and saving videos for future reference. Last week,

Mahogany Knots

posted a new style. After seeing it, I thought about it and thought about it. It really intrigued me, but in the back of my head I was thinking my hair is not nearly long enough. And then,

wwestNDNbeautyy

did it and I had to give it a try. Her hair is long too, but for some reason, having another person do it gave me a little more confidence in my ability to do it. Who knows? Maybe it’s just the power of YouTube.

This is my hair after setting it with the twists. I was still worried my hair wouldn’t be long enough but I pinned the twists to the side for the night and I was confident I could pin the hair up reasonably well. I moisturized and set my hair using

ORS Olive Oil Smooth Pudding

and used extra bobby pins to keep the sides smoothed in place while setting.

I was really happy with the definition in my hair after taking down the twists.

And the final result is absolutely beautiful. I think a few well placed flowers will really make this a stand-out contender for the wedding. What do you think. Any hairstyles or YouTubers catching your eye?

Ribbons and Blessings

I am a terrible procrastinator. I seems to always be caught at the last minute when it comes to gifts. But I am also very good at coming up with something at the last minute and on a budget. With the extended unemployment this year, the budget was very low to almost non-existent and I got a last minute notice that friends were adopting twins and their church was throwing a shower. I absolutely love and adore the couple and I had to do something for them. They have been wanting children for years and this was just such an extreme blessing that I couldn’t miss out on it. I want to cry just writing about it now.

So, what do you do when you want to make an impactful contribution but you have absolutely no money? Here is how I did it.

During the Spring/Summer, I did some cleaning out around the house and took a lot of movies, books and my Kindle Fire to my local used book/movie/music seller and came out with a ton of credit.

You can check out that post here

. What better way to welcome little ones than with books? Actually, just about every gift I give includes a book.

I had no idea what kind of book to get and I thought about getting a couple of movies as well, but kids are so picky about movies once they get to a certain age. These boys are two and starting to recognize what they like so I’ll let the happy parents deal with that. But books are a little different in my opinion. Books are more universal and as long as the pictures are super pretty, the story could be about anything.

Well, if you want pretty pictures, you can’t go wrong with Doctor Seuss. I combed the Doctor Seuss section and picked no only titles that I know and love but some that I had never heard of. I didn’t know about the body part books.

And since these are all used, the prices are super affordable. But just to spread the reading love a little more and allow for some movie shopping as well, I asked the store to split my credit so I could give the boys credit to come back. I think I was able to give $50 and still have plenty of credit left over for myself.

So, that takes care of the gift. What about wrapping? For that, I went into my supply closet and pulled out my bucket-o-ribbon.

A gift bag would have been a little too impersonal so I pulled out a mix of ribbons in lengths long enough to wrap around the stack of book a couple of times. I mixed different fabrics, textures and colors. I wanted something that was fun to look at and fun to get in to.

I was thrilled with the result and mommy was too.

So what do you think? Any fast thinking gift giving you want to brag about?