Friday Fragments

They're back! I haven't done these in awhile. Have you missed my fragments as much as I have? (You don't have to answer that.)

*The Northeast is getting pummeled with snow after having a few mild winters in a row. Why did this happen AFTER we moved away from there? I love snowstorms! I've been a little disappointed with our first Midwestern winter. Apparently it's been a mild one. You would think that would be a good thing, but no, I miss snowstorms. While it snows frequently here, there haven't been any big storms. The good thing is that it hasn't been as cold as it usually gets, although there have been a few days where it's been bone-chillingly cold--well below zero, which is just miserable. Anyway, I'm hoping for at least one big storm before the winter is over.

*Speaking of winter, I finally bought a pair of Uggs! For years I resisted doing so because:
1) I thought they were kind of "ugg-ly" (ha ha),
2) I thought they were overpriced, and
3) I don't usually like to get things that are really trendy (it took a few years before I'd read the Twilight books, for example).
Instead of Uggs I've worn an imitation pair from Target and a pair of black Bearpaws which are nice and about half the price of Uggs. I decided recently to get the new "Bailey" Uggs on a whim. I like that they're shorter and have a button on the side; I think these "moonboots" (as I've always called them) are actually cute (well, unless you fold them all the way over like the black boot in the picture below. That looks weird!). Most importantly, they're very warm and cozy. Real sheepskin feels awesome on the feet when it's cold outside!

 
*I went to college at the University of Pennsylvania, which was just ranked fifth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, tying with Stanford, and coming in behind Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Columbia (when did Columbia get so good? I don't remember it beating Penn when I was in school. They're moving up!). In any case, it's not shabby company! I loved Penn and Philadelphia. Coincidentally, I read a recent issue of the alumni magazine this week, and it made me feel terribly nostalgic for my college days. They were so much fun and it was one of the best times of my life.

*Also in the rankings, Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah was ranked the most popular university in the nation. That's where I always wanted to go and I was accepted there, but I decided to go to the secular Ivy League rather than "the Lord's Ivy League," as I like to call it. Either way, I couldn't lose!

*Well, from the best schools in the country to this: our dishwasher broke on Sunday night. It needs a new motor, which won't be replaced until next Wednesday when the part comes in and the technician can come and do it. In the meantime, I'm having loads of fun hand-washing all of the dishes every day.

*I like the new season of American Idol more than I thought I would. It's not the same without Simon Cowell, but Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez are surprisingly good replacements. I like the star power and singing experience they bring to the judging table. And Steven Tyler can be really funny. 

*January was a productive month for me. I was able to get a lot of things done that have needed to get done for awhile. As a reward for myself I'm going to buy some cute pajamas that I've been wanting for awhile. Let's hope I can maintain the momentum and make February a good month too instead of getting stuck in the doldrums like I did last February!

*This is my 300th blog post in four years of blogging!

I guess I've rambled on long enough for now. Thanks to Mrs. 4444 at Half Past Kissin Time for the Friday Fragments idea. Have a good weekend!

Update On My Quest to Get Oprah Tickets...

Back in September in this blog post I vowed to go to a taping of the Oprah show this year. Like I said there, I'm not some weird overexcited fan (really, I'm not!), I've just liked many of her shows over the last decade and I like her. So, I received this e-mail last week:

Thank you for your interest in attending a taping of The Oprah Show.

Unfortunately, we were unable to accommodate your reservation request.

Continue to visit the Oprah Show Reservations area on Oprah.com to see when we'll be offering reservations for upcoming shows.

You can also click here to check for last-minute reservation opportunities, as additional seats often become available at short notice.

Sincerely,

The Oprah Show Audience Team
www.oprah.com

*****

Well, this won't deter me; like the e-mail encouraged me to do, I'm going to keep on trying, especially for one of those last-minute seats! There are about four more months until the end of the show. I am determined to be in the audience for a taping of one of those final shows. I didn't move all the way out to the Midwest to not be successful in this (the show is taped in Chicago, which we now live less than four hours away from!). Wish me luck! 

 

Ode to Christmas

Can you believe it's been one month since Christmas? It seems like it was a long time ago. It feels that way every year. There's all the warmth and brightness and good feelings of the holidays and then--BAM!--it's over and done with. Cold, dark January arrives, bereft of the lights, decorations, songs, and gifts of December, and it makes it seem like Christmas was months ago rather than weeks. Anyway, onto the merrier things of the now-past season...

Tree shopping...

 Tree decorating...

Gingerbread-House making...

Christmas card picture-taking...

 

The nicest gift basket we've ever been given (It was from our real estate agent; Peter's given her a number of referrals since we moved here.)...

Meeting Santa...

Christmas Eve snowstorm = White Christmas...

Decorations...

 Christmas morning, before and after...

 I'm already looking forward to next Christmas...only eleven months to go!

Ten Things I Learned From Our Trip Back East

The week after Christmas we went home to New England for the first time since moving to Iowa. I learned a few things from the experience:

1. Don't fly United. (We had to spend the night and then thirteen hours of the next day at O'Hare because we missed our connecting flight to Boston. Speaking of which....)

2. Don't fly through O'Hare Airport in Chicago. (It's too big. Too much can go wrong. Not even the fun children's play area (which was a sanity-saver for us and the kids) would make me want to go through O'Hare again!)

3. Don't fly in the winter, unless it's to a warm and sunny destination. Maybe not even then.

4. Don't check your bags; try instead to cram everything into carry-ons. We spent three days in the same clothes without most of our things. Our luggage made it to Boston way before we did. That stunk. Literally.

5. When every flight to Boston is overbooked for days and there are over 130 people on standby and you are ranked in the 50s on the list, take any flight you can that will get you to New England. We got on an 11 p.m. flight to Hartford, Connecticut (just a few miles from our old house) and my mom came and picked us up and drove us home to Massachusetts the next morning. It was a pain, but it saved us from spending more days at O'Hare.

6. Beg your mother-in-law to give less gifts next year or to have them sent directly to you. You don't want to know what we paid to ship everything back to Iowa!

7. Getting a 1-year-old baby to go to sleep and stay asleep in a hotel room is nearly impossible. I had some bad mom moments due to this.

8. Don't get your child all excited for the hotel pool and then find out when you get to the hotel that there is no pool. This happened on our last night at a hotel in Boston by the airport.

9. When you park at the airport when you're first leaving for your trip, don't leave the interior lights on. Otherwise your battery will slowly drain and you will come back a week later to a dead car.

10. Because you love your family and you had a great time once you got there, consider doing it all again next Christmas.

Rich Kid Stockings

Recently I was looking over the Pottery Barn Kids catalog while I ate my lunch. I almost choked (figuratively speaking) when I saw this picture:

Look at the size of the boy's stocking! It's as big as he is! Possibly bigger. I know Pottery Barn is swank and pricey and caters to a certain clientele, the kind of clientele who can get jumbo-sized stockings for their kids and fill them with $200 worth of gifts (or a dozen of Santa's elves--these look roomy enough). But this isn't a rant against the rich (despite the title of this blog post). It's a rant against stockings that are as big as children. I guess there's nothing like gigantic stockings hung on the mantel to set the tone of the holiday, right? Even if I were the richest woman in the world I'd never choose stockings this big. I think it's tacky and very materialistic. I'm sorry Pottery Barn; I really like you and the lovely glossy design layouts in your catalogs, but I'm not buying this (literally!). Stick with the Regular size you offer and discontinue this ridiculous Jumbo size!

What do you think? Am I being an oversensitive Scrooge, or are these stockings too big for even Santa to fill?

My Latest and Greatest Book Reviews!

A Journey to the New World: The Diary of Remember Patience Whipple by Kathryn Lasky
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This is a good book series and is an easy, enjoyable way to read about U.S. history in various time periods and settings. I enjoyed this book; it was well-written and it drew a vivid picture in my mind of what life on the Mayflower and in Plimoth must have been like. (Yes, it's Scholastic so it's written for kids, but these are good for adults too. I bought a couple of books from this "Dear America" series at a book sale because I love American history and I like how this series makes reading about it fun and interesting and does it through the eyes of observant, smart girls.)

 The Life of Our Lord by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars


This book is a gem! It's a lovely quick read and is perfect for both children and adults. It's beautifully and simply written by a master writer who had no need to embellish the life story of Jesus Christ, which is beautiful enough in and of itself. This is worth re-reading many times as well as owning. 

I stopped reading this book at page 134 when I thought I was going to die of boredom. This was written in 1922, which I didn't realize when I got the book, so the non-fiction writing style is antiquated and not very well-written or entertaining. The author includes way too many quotes from direct sources like journals and letters. Some quotes are informative and interesting, but too many and you feel like you're reading a (badly written) research paper. He makes many questionable assumptions and...more Woman's Life in Colonial Days by Carl Holliday
My rating: 2 out of 5 stars

I stopped reading this book at page 134 when I thought I was going to die of boredom. This was written in 1922, which I didn't realize when I got the book, so the non-fiction writing style is antiquated and not very well-written or entertaining. The author includes way too many quotes from direct sources like journals and letters. Some quotes are informative and interesting, but too many and you feel like you're reading a (badly written) research paper. He makes many questionable assumptions and presents them as fact, which he wouldn't be able to get away with very easily today, and he meanders off topic often. There is some interesting information here, but it's too bad that it's presented in the way that it is.
 

The Gingerbread House in My Neighborhood

There is a real gingerbread house in my neighborhood. Well, it's not really real, but it's designed just like one and it's really pretty. When I came out to Iowa last December when we were exploring the possibility of moving here, a real estate agent showed me around and she drove me by this house and neighborhood to show that there are indeed some unique houses in the area. Little did I know that about seven months later we'd be moving in right down the street!

As you can see I took these pictures in the summer. I waited to post them until now because this is the season of gingerbread houses. I didn't take close-ups of the details of the house because I didn't want the neighbors to think I was any crazier than I already looked. But believe me, this house has intricate beautiful details and is truly a standout in the area. (Am I starting to sound like a real estate agent? Sorry.)

This cute "gingerbread" ranch house is right across the street from the gingerbread house. I love its stone face and the brickwork and wooden shutters. So pretty!

Friday Fragments

Friday Fragments are a fun way to sum up the week or to write about any bits of randomness that have been floating around in your head for awhile. They're the creation of the lovely Mrs. 4444 at Half Past Kissin Time.
And now, on to this week's fragments...

*I've decided to give up Saturday Night Live. I think the humor on it can be really funny and I like the political satire and current events commentary, but some of the sketches and jokes can be really crass and it's getting worse. It's really not worth watching things that are offensive to me even when there's some good fun entertainment mixed in with it. So, good-bye SNL. Until you clean up your act (and I'm not holding my breath on that), you've lost a viewer who could have done awesome publicity for you on her blog (ha ha).

*On the other side of the spectrum, we watched a really good movie this week that I highly recommend: The Blind Side, starring Sandra Bullock. What an inspirational feel-good story this is! And the best part is, it's based on a true story. It's the best movie I've seen in awhile. If you haven't seen it, see it!

*I can't believe Bristol Palin made the finals of Dancing With the Stars. I think she has a decent shot of winning the whole thing next week, even though there have been far more talented dancers on the show this season. Bristol the Pistol is in it to win it!

*I read hundreds of pages this week in order to get the book read for my book club meeting last night. We read The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Great book! I highly recommend it. Similar to The Blind Side, it involves black-white relationships in the South. I'm glad I read it, and that I read it on time! (See my pithy book review in the post below.)

 
*It's starting to get pretty cold here. I've heard a lot about severely cold Iowa winters. I'm not looking forward to it and am preparing to go into hibernation mode as much as I can for the next few months.

*She is a lucky lady. That's going to be quite the wedding next summer!

*My mother is coming here from Massachusetts tomorrow for a week! For the first time ever Peter and I are going to be having our own Thanksgiving meal. I'm excited for my mom to come, excited for Thanksgiving, excited to go see the Broadway touring version of Mary Poppins the day after Thanksgiving in Des Moines, excited that Christmas is coming. What can I say; it's a very exciting time!

*I'm taking next week off from blogging and the blogosphere. There's just too much excitement going on right now. I'm thankful to anyone and everyone who reads my blog. I'm thankful for a whole lot more but I won't get started on that, I've been rambling long enough. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Book Review: The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a great book that brings the civil rights era of the 1960s vividly to life in Jackson, Mississippi. I enjoyed the characters and their stories and perspectives very much.

I will never think of chocolate pies the same way again (unfortunately!).

A Midwestern Fall

I wasn't quite sure what to expect of fall here in the Midwest. Since I'm from New England--the land famous for beautiful fall foliage, where almost every street you drive down in the fall looks like a postcard--I knew I had to lower my expectations a bit. It's a good thing I did! The leaves do change colors here and it's lovely, but it's not close to the breathtaking profusion of colors that you'll find everywhere in New England. This is a picture I posted on my blog two years ago that I randomly took while running errands around home in Connecticut: 

Yeah, it's not like that here. For starters, there aren't nearly as many trees as there are back East. But I think it's very pretty here in Iowa in the fall. It's a more subtle beauty. The thing I've liked most about it, at least from a photographic perspective, is that it helps me to focus on the little details, like the amazing individual leaves that are the basic building blocks of fall foliage. I'm happy to say that this native New Englander has enjoyed fall in the Midwest, so I guess we'll stick around for some more of them.

I took all these pictures throughout September and October in an exciting place--my backyard!  
(I apologize that I stack my photos one after another instead of putting some side-by-side or in mosaics. I don't know how to do mosaics and whenever I try to put pictures side-by-side it doesn't work. Someday I'll learn!)

The summer green is mixed in with the fall red here. It's a mixture of my two favorite seasons.

Close...

Closer...

Closest of all!

I like the feathery yellow leaves of this giant tree at the back of the yard.

A semi-circle of trees in the next-door neighbor's backyard.

Bare trees can be beautiful too.

I hope you've enjoyed your fall as much as I have!