You must be lost

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
- What I create will be just for you.
- It'll be done this year.
- You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to put this in your journal as well. We all can make stuff!

Spread the Art Love <3

Rules:
For eight days you have to post something that made you happy that day. Tag eight people to do the same.

I'm not tagging anyone, so do it if you feel so inclined. Or don't, see if I care! ;P

1. Having Jonah fall asleep at nap time to me reading him the Simpsons Xmas Book (which is basically a comic book version of the first episode). I was trying to pick a book that was long enough to get him to calm down and with about 3 or 4 pages left, I heard his breath regulate and felt him go limp as he dropped his cup from lunch that he was holding.

2. Getting the house mostly back in some sort of order.

3. Working through organizing the cabinet that's replacing the desk we just got rid of. I threw away a lot of useless paper yesterday. I also went through and weeded out the best of Jonah's art from school and just kept one of his notes per month (he gets one for every day that tells me how many diaper changes he had, how well he ate, what his overall mood was and any special notes of problems or things he particularly enjoyed that day).

4. Making Baja style fish tacos for dinner.

5. Playing Clue with the neighbors until midnight. Anyone that knows me knows I tend to avoid board and card games, but this was really fun. I hadn't played Clue since I was a kid. We played three games and they were all really good. No one won the second game. We all guessed wrong in the end.

Rules:
For eight days you have to post something that made you happy that day. Tag eight people to do the same.

I'm not tagging anyone, so do it if you feel so inclined. Or don't, see if I care! ;P

1. Finally took the stuff back to Target that I bought before the Superhero 5k and wound up not needing. Hurray for an extra $50 right before the holidays. Used it to take care of most of the kids on my list.

2. Got Jonah to nap. Guess the secret is to drag him somewhere with me right after lunch and wear him out. He fell asleep in the car after we left Target, so I cut my day of errands short and went straight home. He was out/tired enough not to wake up much as I carried him in the house and took off his jacket and shoes to get him in bed. He slept until about 5:30 and was in a much better mood last night than he had been in quite a while.

3. Watching Jonah and Maya, the little girl across the street play. And not to be smug about it or anything, but I was really proud of how he handled himself. I've gotten some sporadic reports from school of hitting and toy snatching and just recently biting. But it was Maya who would hit him if he tried to come play with a toy she was playing with. He was doing a good job of sharing and trying to play with her, but she's a few months younger and not there yet I guess. It was about 20 or 21 months when I first got hitting reports, and that's how old she is, so I'm sure she'll grow out of it just like he did. But it was nice to see him not react adversely to her aggression. He just looked at her like, "what was that?!" They were so silly though, at first just running around screaming and with the dogs and such too, it was so chaotic for the first 20 minutes or so. They eventually settled down enough to play with some Duplo blocks and the Magnadoodle and do some quieter constructive things.

4. The new Blue Coast Burrito is open at Nashville West! YAY!!! That means we don't have to drive all the way over to the 100 Oaks area just to get a Baja fish burrito fix. And we also have another option on nights we go to Costco and need to grab dinner while we're out. No more resorting to Red Robin (blech!). I'm really surprised there aren't more restaurants down there. There's a Logan's Roadhouse going in next door to Red Robin, but I'm not excited about that either. But I'm totally happy about Blue Coast.

5. I realized it's literally been years since I set foot in a Wal-Mart. As in probably right around 2 years.

6. It was very minimal effort to participate in the cookie swap at Jonah's school yesterday. All I had to do was drop the cookies off in the teacher's lounge. Jonah had a confused look on his face when we left and realized he wasn't going to school, but he didn't get sad or anything.

7. Crossing a lot of tasks off my to do list for the week.

8. Brandy arrives in Huntsville today!!!!

Rules:
For eight days you have to post something that made you happy that day. Tag eight people to do the same.

I'm not tagging anyone, so do it if you feel so inclined. Or don't, see if I care! ;P

1. Remembering to call my bro on his birthday and hearing it was a better day for him than the day before.

2. Talking to Brandy again on Facebook. 2 MORE DAYS!

3. Totally winging it on dinner and pulling off quite a yummy one with just stuff we had on hand, despite me desperately needing to go to the grocery (was pan seared Orange Roughy fillets with a Middle Eastern sort of spice rub and a grain/pasta mixture of Israli couscous, red quinoa, split baby chickpeas and tricolor orzo with similar spices as the fish).

4. Watching Bender's Game. I personally think it was better than Bender's Big Score and I haven't seen Beast with a Billion Backs yet. Could have been because of all the geeky parodies, though. Fry: "What's that, a hobbit?" Bender: "No, that's a hobo and a rabbit, but they're making a hobbit."

5. Catching Sunflower before she got through the hole she dug under the gate. Totally looked like Winnie the Pooh or something, with her halfway out of the hole. Luckily she was just a little muddy and I was able to let her dry off in the laundry room and brush it out. The other day when she actually got out, she ran to the nearby horse pasture and rolled around in manure. That wasn't so easily gotten rid of. Even though I was pissed at the time, thinking back on the scene and watching her make an obvious decision about whether to try to make a break for it even though she was caught was really funny. I'm really glad she didn't get out because I always worry about her getting hit by a car or something (I've found her in a neighborhood across Highway 100 before). And the fact that I didn't wind up having to give her another bath was good, since that's no easy task.

6. Teaching Jonah to sing "Santa Claus is coming to town". About all he can manage is to melodically say, "Santa, town", but he gets the point across.

7. Dreaming about costumes for the second time in a week (figures since I had sworn off trying to work on any until the first of the year).

Several on my friends list have posted this one today and I like it:

1. Stop talking about politics for a moment or two.
2. Post a reasonably-sized picture in your LJ, NOT under a cut tag, of something pleasant, such as an adorable kitten, or a fluffy white cloud, or a bottle of booze. Something that has NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS.
3. Include these instructions, and share the love.

Since most of them have been LOL cats, I'm going to post something from my personal stash:



This was one of my favorite flowers in the garden this summer, the Green Flair Gladiolus. I almost bought a Dendrobium orchid at the grocery yesterday because it looked like a miniature version of this. I'm a sucker for green flowers.

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It was hard to pick just one image on a couple of those.