7QT: January Oddments

1.

Get ready for February 4th! This Wednesday the WWRW link-up is making a comeback! 

2.  Our library is offering the Hoopla app!

What's the hoopla? Hoopla is a free app that lets me download movies, television shows, audiobooks, and music right to my iPhone for FREEEEEEEEE!!!!

Jill has been watching Max & Ruby cartoons, which are not available on Netflix or on Amazon Prime (without paying extra) for FREEEEEEEE!

And I've been downloading music left and right. Specifically all the classical music that is recommended by the Little Saints Preschool Program we're using. More on that another day.

This week's pre-school theme is At the Zoo, and we've been listening to Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals while she dances each animal's part. For FREEEEEEEEEE!

Someday you might read Wee Gillis by Munro Leaf to a three year-old, and she'll want to know what bagpipes are. With Hoopla, you can download William Boyle's Bagpipe Virtuoso compilation in a flash and for FREEEEE! (Confession: I love the pipes.)

Libraries are the best.

3.  Grey Skies bringing you down?

Try eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches and listening to the Elvis Presley Pandora station.

You may call it inspired, I'm calling it history class.

4.  Knitting shizzle.

My 3 teen girls and their handmade swag.

I knit while I watch tv. I've been making mittens, and the bonnet I over-grammed on the Instagram. I usually get my patterns from books.

For the mitts, I used Vintage Knit Gloves and Mittens: 25 Patterns for Timeless Fashions by Kathryn Fulton.

Why is that hat green? Because I used leftover yarn from the matching sweater.  Why did I make a green baby sweater for my baby girl? Because I made the sweater before I knew the baby was a girl.

For both the bonnet and sweater, I used Vintage Knits for Modern Babies by Hadley Fierlinger. Can you tell I prefer the vintage patterns?

Jill really wants Elsa gloves, but I think she'll be getting Elsa mittens instead. #disappointed

5. What have we been watching?  Maybe this should be it's own link-up. WHWBW. Waddya think?

Our regularly scheduled programming includes:

Wallander

Pros: KENNETH BRANAGH! Gorgeous Swedish landscapes.

Cons: Dark and twisted crime.  My idea of Sweden is a now a mash-up of  Flicka, Ricka, Dicka books, Ikea, and serial killers/sex traffickers. Also troublesome, BBC=1.5 hour long shows. Mama gets tired.

All Creatures Great & Small

Pros: Netflix has really cleaned up the sound of this 1970s show. We are huge Herriot book fans here, and the television show does not disappoint.  I love Robert Hardy as Siegfried Farnon. I loved Robert Hardy as Professor Slugworth. I love Robert Hardy.

And Helen. I love her too. I covet her clothes. The midi skirts, the berets, sigh. I understand that she gets re-cast in the later seasons, but SHHH! I'm not there yet!

Bonus: This show is only an hour!

Cons: Could be totally acceptable for the entire family, if the entire family happens to be okay with footage of dudes with their arms up inside a cow's hoo-hah. (Remember my purse description?) Did these actors really DO that?  Did they use stunt animals too?  It is a puzzlement.

Foyle's War, Series 1

Pros: Police detective show set in Hastings, England during WWII. WWII is my preferred historical period. Gentle, quiet, yet brilliant Detective Inspector Foyle is often under-estimated, but always gets the criminal with some blinding stroke of genius.

Cons: Stupid 90 minute shows...too long...got work in the morning.

6. Netflix and Amazon Prime movies that have struck our fancy are...

The Castle

If you like Napoleon Dynamite and Aussie accents, this is the film for you. It could be a family film, IF there weren't a few Eff bombs dropping. My 18 year old recommended it and we've been quoting it ever since. (No, we're not quoting the eff words.) Decent message too.

The Hundred-Foot Journey

Everyone enjoyed it EXCEPT the 12 year old who may have said, "PLEASE let me watch another movie so that wasn't the last movie I've seen!" There's no accounting for taste. It is a teensy bit violent in the beginning, what with the mother getting trapped in a burning building set on fire by terrorists and dying. Other than that it's a clean movie with great acting and FOOD!

WHYBW?

7.  This Sunday starts the Seven Sundays of St. Joseph. (Thanks for the heads up, Mom!)

The Seven Sunday of St. Joseph is a seven day novena that takes place once a week, every Sunday (duh) until the feast of St. Joseph. Each Sunday, there are readings and prayers that focus on the different sorrow and joys from St. Joseph's life.

Selling a house? (Cari? Dwija?) Buying a house? Trying to make peace with the house you're in? Or just love St. Jose? It's only seven days! We can do this!

The hard part will be remembering every Sunday, because as I explained to my mother, I suck at novenas.

I always miss a day and have to double up once or thrice.  I even signed up for the Pray More Novenas emails, and every now and then Satan sends one to my spam box! But my mom says, "There's no time in Heaven."

Phew. Because picturing the OCD angel with a clipboard ticking off the boxes on my incomplete and/or tardy novenas wasn't encouraging at all.

So Seven Quick Takes in January, done. Boom. Pow. Linking up with the new hostess of the weekend fun, Kelly at This Ain't the Lyceum.

Don't forget to link up your book reviews on Wednesday. I'm bringing WWRW baaaack!

7QT: TGIO!

1.  You know you married the right guy when he busts out his electric guitar to learn the Strawberry Shortcake (Berry Bitty Adventures) theme song.

I cannot even describe the awesomeness.  We had one berry good jam.

2.  I'd like him to learn the theme for Franklin next.  We changed the words to "Hey, it's Polly!"  Maybe Edmund could learn how to play a jaw harp?

3.  Speaking of theme songs, I may have mentioned once or a dozen times that I came up with lyrics for the theme to Monarch of the Glen.

Love that sexy sax.

Problem:  Since they keep changing who the Laird is, I have to change the words fairly often.

4.  My wonder son Peter, who is in Pennsylvania this weekend for a national collegiate level golf tournament, penned words to the theme close to everyone's hearts, Downton Abbey.

"Dog is walking.
Open shutters now.
Bells are ringinging.
The mail is here, the kettle's warm.
Measuring the places.
Petals falling.
Lamps are on.
DUST, dust the chandelier."

5.  YES!  I used up 5 takes on theme songs! #winning

Time for a gratuitous baby pic.

6.

Last night, Lucy and I watched Sense and Sensibility with *swoon* Alan Rickman.

Lucy commented that it was remarkably like the movie, Scents and Sensibility on Netflix.

no words. #fail

7.  I beg to disagree with Mr. T.S. Eliot.  September is the cruelest month.  Maybe October.  There were snow flurries this morning.

Polly will not abide car seats or naps longer than five minutes.

I hear a baby crying in my head when I go to sleep at night.

This season of life is dang hard.  So many people with so many needs.

Sorry blog readers, but I blew off WWRW this week.  I chose to shower, walk the whole brood the whole way to the library, and stop at the playground on the way home.  I let Edmund and Jill play as long as they wanted.

I'd like to promise it won't happen again, but most days are difficult days.  Not a lot of reading is happening and even less blogging.

It's just going to have to be that way for awhile.  I know you'll understand.

Any bloggers wanna take a turn guest hosting WWRW?  Shoot me an email.  Or just leave a comment.

My troubles aren't really troubles.  All these people in my life to love are treasures.  I get that.  But here's to a day when I go to the bathroom and nobody talks to me through the door!

 

Linking up with Jen. A day late.  That's how it's gotta be.

7 QT: Books and Movies, Movies and Books

1.

A Big Round of Applause to Cari Donaldson for taking pity on my Battle of the Books team and creating this fab design.

Turns out there is an award for Best T-Shirt Design, so if my team wins, we will be sure to thank her in our acceptance speech.

2.

Speaking of Battle of the Books, I am meeting with my team today.  I am rewarding them for correct answers with Swedish Fish (because Whales Eat Fish) and Lorna Doone Shortbread Cookies, because that is what Tucker Mouse is nibbling in the beginning of The Cricket in Times Square, also because they are scrumptious.

3.  Another book from our list of twenty is Reaching for the Moon by Buzz Aldrin.  Buzz was the second man to set foot on the moon.  Reaching for the Moon is a great non-fiction picture book for older readers.

 

We recently watched The Right Stuff, about the first seven astronauts in the space program.  It's a fine family movie if you fast forward the sperm-collection scene and the trampy-ladies-in-the bar scene.

Never mind.  Just watch Apollo 13 instead.  Apollo 13 is shorter and better done anyway.

4.  Now our family is on a big baseball themed movie kick.  Last week, most of us watched The Chef's favorite movie of all time, The Rookie.

He weeps every time the dad gets called up to the big leagues.  He'll deny it, but he does.

Other baseball themed movies on my list are Eight Men Out, Field of Dreams, The Natural (maybe, probably not a family movie), Pride of the Yankees, A League of Their Own (which we watched a few weeks ago), and The Sandlot.

I also own a copy of Champions of Faith, the baseball edition, but this is more of a documentary than a movie.

The Chef complains that most of the movies on my list are not heavy enough on the baseball.  Too much movie gets in the way.

So what baseball movies am I missing?

5.  Speaking of baseball, back to Battle of the Books, TWO kids on my team have declared that Honus & Me by Dan Gutman is their favorite book OF ALL TIME.

I reviewed Honus & Me way back in the day.  You can read that review here.

If you have a boy, or a girl who likes time travel and baseball, Honus & Me is a proven hit with the 4th grade crowd.

Plus, I love that Honus & Me combines sci-fi fiction with actual historical facts about superstar baseball legend, Honus Wagner and the true if bizarre story of his baseball card that really sold for $2.7 million dollars in 2007 to Wayne Gretzky.

Oh yeah.  Me thinks I may have already shoved Honus down your throats this year.  Whatever.

6.  I started watching Call the Midwife.  I came for the period drama, but I'm staying for the retro clothes and musical treasures.

I've already dropped the hint that I would really appreciate the 2-disc soundtrack from the show for Mother's Day, mostly because I love songs like this one.

7.  Happy Mother's Day to all you mums out there.  Another year of trying to be more like her:

and less like her:

down the (Fallopian) tube.  Sorry, couldn't resist.

I read this hilarious and somewhat foul-mouthed list of what mothers' really want.

Here's hoping all of your bathrooms visits will be undisturbed on Sunday, unlike this:

Linking up with Jen at Conversion Diary.  Hasta!