Sizzling Anniversary

 Dan and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary.  I know, I'm pretty impressed myself.  To celebrate, we went out to dinner. We are unromantic and I'm okay with that.  Dan took us out for Okonomiyaki, which is my favorite!  Unfortunately, the closest one we know of is a do-it-yourself.  We have done that before, but not with great results.

This time, we had the benefit of prior experience, and we you-tubed a video on how to do it right and it came out perfect!

We prefer Hiroshima style with the noodles.

Dan, weilding the spatula with good effect. 

I know it looks a mess.  It kind of is.  But it tastes delicious!  A couple more times here and I'll be ready to try to make it from scratch for you. 

My finished product. 

Yes, I was quite pleased with myself!  And it tasted wonderful!

Levi's Before and After pictures

 You would think that it wouldn't be too hard to get pictures of the dog.  Just set him down and click the camera, right? Ug, no.  Apparently Levi does not want to pose and does not want to cooperate.  He wants to come up in your face for petting.  He thinks it is absolutely silly to have you be 2 feet away, out of petting range.  However, I persevered, and out of 25 pictures, there were a few that were adequate.

Then he got his summer hair cut.  I am sorry that the pictures are of opposite sides. I could only get what I got!  And not for lack of trying.  Sigh.

Behold, my shaggy dog!

And now the naked dog:

A Blog-to-Book Critique

 I am bitterly disappointed that Blurb.com stopped doing blog-to-book.  Oh, sure, they say they brought it back, but they really didn't.  You essentially have to copy and past everything from your blog.  It is a pain.  And you have to use their stupid new BookWright program which is severely inferior to their old BookSmart program.  You would think that someone would jump into this sorely needed opening, but alas, no one else makes it as easy.

I looked around at a few companies, but I didn't like any of them.  Since I am now 3 years behind on my blog books, I decided I needed to commit, and I committed to the one with the least amount of work.  I went with intoRealPages.com. The selling point for me is that it takes 20 minutes to make the book.  It slurps your blog posts in (and then it takes an hour to load, but the stuff you have to do is easy peasy!) and it prints them out exactly as you posted them.  So, super easy and very little work.

I kind of knew what I was getting when I ordered it- no choices.  You cannot edit anything.  You can pick a few photos for the front, but they are tiny.  You cannot control any part of the layout or change anything.  That it.  You get what you get.  Hence the super-easy, 20 minute process.

I am not happy with this company.  Not at all.  I sent my book in, and 2 weeks later I went to check on its progress, expecting it to be shipped.  I didn't check it earlier because I was so excited about it and knew it would take a month or so and I didn't want to be dying every day waiting and thinking about it.  So, I waited 2 weeks.  It was still "Processing"!  I sent an email.  Zero response from the company.  I sent another email.  Nothing.

I went to their FB page and saw all kinds of red flags that said this is a company that is overextended and unable to really meet their demand.  I sent a message thru their Facebook page and 2 days later got a response saying that the problem was they they didn't like my address.  I admit that an FPO AP throws a lot of people off, but they actually had them as options in their website, so it really shouldn't have been an issue.  And if it was an issue, why on earth didn't THEY let me know?  I confirmed my address for them and waited.

A few days later, the book changed to "Printing".  It sat there for a while, and then was something else for long enough I was getting worried.  It finally shipped.... 6 weeks after I initially ordered it.  So, no.  I am not happy with this company at all.  Oh.  Would you like to know what they offered me as compensation?  $15 back.  They refunded me $15 on a $140 book.

I confess, it was $140 with shipping.  But it IS 392 pages!  So a little pricier than Blurb, but not obscenely so.  Okay, maybe a little..... Okay, a lot, when you take into account that I always waited for a 30% off or more coupon before ordering from Blurb.

Alright, now, lets get down to what I got.  I actually was fairly pleased with the book.  Since I was expecting small photos, I wasn't surprised, but I'm still a little disappointed in that.

This is the front cover. You can put your title and subtitle and 3 pictures.  That's all.  It is also an odd size. It is made in the Netherlands, I think, so that may be why?

On the left you have the last Blurb book I did, with it's standard 8x10 size.  On the right is the odd size of my new book. 

How the back compares. With IntoRealPages, you can't put any photos on the back, just words. 

 Here is the format.  It puts it into 2 columns.  That is a good thing, because the book would be freakishly longer otherwise.  But it does not make for an aesthetically pleasing book, nor does it support larger pictures.

Look at this page.  Some pictures are larger than others.  I didn't get to pick which ones.  The program did it.  It does have lovely titles for each new blog post though. 

And some of the pages do look really good.  But the 2 column thing is really not attractive at all.  And Josh is offended by the amount of wasted space.

It automatically breaks the months onto "chapters", and you get a table of contents telling you what page each month/chapter starts.  So that's kind of cool. 

You can't tell from this photo, but the last page is.... the back of the book?  Odd.  But it is true. The back cover is also the very last page. Same with the front as well.  The inside of the front cover is the first page of the book.  A bit weird. 

And here you can see it, 392 pages!  

Month of the Military Child

 I have some amazing children.  They are resilient and roll with the changes and do it with a great attitude.  April has been Month of the Military Child, and the schools did some stuff honoring them.  I have discovered that not everyone rejoices in the blessings of being a Military Brat. Some people find it sad and depressing and overwhelming.  Some people harp about how hard it is.  I say poopy.  It is what it is. And it is whatever you make of it.  Parents set the tone for how their children react and we treat it as a blessing and an adventure. And I think my kids are Rock Stars!

The girls had eye appointments at 8:10 in the morning and we arrived in the parking lot at 7:59.  I told the girls we could just wait in the car, since Colors would play at 8:00.  Nope.  They were really excited because across the parking lot and field is Building One, where the official flag goes up and they had never seen it go up during Colors.  So they hopped out to stand at attention to watch it.  You can barely se the flag waving in front of the far building there.

And Delaney made this vest herself!  I got some old camies donated for my came/flag project, and these exceedingly old ones were in the bag.  Delaney was thrilled and immediately made this vest.  And wore it all day/.

Delaney's picture and haiku about being in the military.  I kind of love her a lot.

Sewing Aspirations

My amazing friend Codi made a fantastic flag out of old camies for her dad (maybe her husband?).  I loved it!  And I want to make one.  I'm working on collecting old uniforms but people are surprisingly reluctant to give them to me.  Ah, well.  I shall persevere!  And hopefully I will still have enthusiasm for the project once I have acquired the materials.  In the meantime, I thought it might be a good end-of-year teacher gift to some of the kid's teachers to make one out of kimonos!

So I have been trying that out.  It is good because I can see if the size of the strips I'm cutting is working out.  

Don't be too impressed with me.  This is my friend's!  But I intend to do one. 

But this one I did.  I did the strips 1.75" wide, but would do 2" next time.  The long strips are around 22" long, but I'll probably try 24" next time.  For the top half, the blue strips are ... um, 9"? long and the red/white are 12-15" long. It did come together pretty quickly.  but now I need to figure out how to display it. (Codi mounted her's in a frame.)

 For future reference,  I will try it with:

7 blue strips 2"x10"
3 light /white strips 2"x15"
4 dark/red 2"x15"
3 light/white 2"x24"
3 dark/red 2"x24"