Do you still use Google Notebook?

I wrote about it in this post almost a year ago. I have since had to reformat my computer so I realized today that, although I still have a Google Notebook account, I no longer had the extension that makes it work in Firefox. That would be simple enough to remedy, but, since they have stopped development for this fun and quite useful little web tool, you can no longer download the extension. (You can read more about the changes on the Google Notebook blog.) However, I never give up that easily. I found this blog which offers an updated extension that will work with Firefox 3.5. It is the clickable green Add to Firefox button in the right-hand sidebar. If you need instructions for installing, click the little Installation link under the button. I’m happy to have it working again! In your travels online all you have to do is highlight a recipe or other piece of information you’d like to save, and right-click, choosing Note This which then will add it to your Notebook. After that you can organize into topics and add labels, etc. Very quick and easy to save your online clippings.

Where do I begin?

Life has been so full in the past months. Our summer was busy, and our fall likewise. Jacob graduated this year and has been taking basic EMT training classes since early September. He was also working full time until last week so I am glad he can concentrate fully on his classes now. He has clinicals at the hospital next week and is enrolled in nursing classes next January. I am excited for him to feel a passion for what he is doing. While he is learning a LOT in the EMT course, his desire is to concentrate on nursing.

Molly’s writing career just continues to amaze me. For longer than I can remember, I have wanted to publish a book. Various pursuits over the last few years and being pulled in many directions at once most every day have succeeded in derailing that dream. Even so, I blame myself mostly as, chiefly, I am a disorganized individual. Following alongside Molly in her writing career has been very exciting for me. I definitely had the same passion she has at the age she is now, and while advantages in publishing might be more readily available to her, I feel she has more drive than I ever had. She very much deserves these accomplishments that she has achieved, and I am just wildly proud of her.

I finally finished copy editing the third book in the series just a couple of weeks ago. Major accomplishment for me as she, poor girl, had wanted to release that title in September already. But now, it is done and will be available in just a few days providing the proof copy she is waiting for is all right. I thought I would post the first three covers. This is also a hugely fun and satisfying part of the process for me. Her printer, CreateSpace, is only that, a printer, so you are responsible for every other aspect of publishing, including making the book’s cover. Thank goodness for Photoshop which I love to work with. Molly searches for stock photos and gives me direction as to what she wants the cover to look like and then gives me thumbs up or down along the way until they eventually turn out like this. It is so fun to watch them come to life!

(The Pirate Daughter’s Promise which is currently with Pleasant Word will be
re-released at CreateSpace with this new cover in the near future.)

One last thought about this series, Pirates & Faith. It will live now in my heart forever. I love her characters so much, and it was so fun following them through all four books. (Yes, there is a fourth.) Molly will be the first to say she would likely change a few things in her first book, The Pirate Daughter’s Promise, which was written when she was just fifteen. Her writing talent has grown and improved over the years. I love the sweetness of the first. The second is full of trials and heartache, and it gripped me deeply. It is also full of comedic moments and a deepening of your love for her continuing characters. The third is slightly different, primarily through the eyes of a young man, a ship’s captain. And the fourth, I think, though I will never be quite able to decide, was my favorite. I just could not stop reading it! Molly confided it was her hardest to write. She almost didn’t finish it! I was pleased to tell her I thought it was her best work. So if you are interested in reading this series or purchasing for a gift, the third one should be available very soon. Just check the sidebar to see if it is clickable. It will take you to Amazon.com.

I will write again and tell you about my poor finger which has been in distress for three weeks.

The oven timer is your friend

I love the healthy benefits of garlic. The kids and I love steamed garlic on crackers. I put a bunch of peeled cloves in a steamer basket, and when they are finished cooking, it’s not long before all the cloves are eaten.

I did this the other day, but I was busy puttering around the house and had forgotten to put my oven timer on. I use my oven timer so much I am afraid the button will wear out before the oven does. Mostly I use it to let me know when a load of laundry is finished washing.

So, when Sam said, what’s that smell? I thought, the garlic! Okay, so you know the rest. The water had boiled dry under the steamer basket and the inside bottom of my little pan was all black. I did a Google search for cleaning burnt pans and ran across a combination I hadn’t tried before: hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dishwashing liquid.

You'll find a bunch of comments on this page if you’re interested: Cleaning Burnt Pans. It’s always nice to have a home remedy to try, isn’t it?

Bees. And more bees.

For years now I have wanted to move our ugly car garage away from the house. Without going into detail other than to say, again, that it is ugly, there are numerous reasons that I thought this would be wonderful. It is attached to the house by a small maybe four foot throughway, one that we did not use anyway. Because we were trying to find some way to magically make a barn appear in which to house our horse (on our land) who currently lives in the barn on the property adjacent to ours, and because we are resourceful people, and after thinking on this quite some time, Jack has decided to turn the garage into a barn. Voilà! I have received my wish. The ugly garage is now moved down by the pasture and will be transformed into a barn for Baylen.

There was a huge amount of buzzing in the wall of the throughway when he moved the garage. It turned out to be a massive hive of bees. Of course more than a few of them ended up in the house. Though men generally don’t think this is a very big deal, I’ve been having mild fits over this, especially as we’ve had an annoying amount of wasps this past summer who also find their way into the house. [It’s a very old house by the way.] So I swatted more than a couple of them in the living room today, not to mention more than a few in other places.

This will seem like a change of subject, but it is not. I started getting a headache last night and it developed into a bad one this morning. This afternoon I decided to sit with some warmth on my neck, and Molly and I watched Confessions of a Shopaholic. Had no idea this was such a cute and fun movie! I really loved it. So it was enjoyable, despite the headache, until I felt a bee sting my leg! I panicked and pulled my jeans up, screaming, “Molly, help me! Molly, help me!” So of course the bee stung me again higher up my leg. Ouch! I haven’t been stung since a wasp stung me on the back of my knee when I was a young girl climbing high up in a combine on the farm. I have decided I do not want to get stung again. It hurts and feels like you are being stung repeatedly and now my leg is numb and painful, but I suppose the worst is over.

We went to a Leeland concert last night and if you ever have the chance I would urge you to go. I love Leeland. Great, just fantastic worship songs. I love Leeland’s passion and love for God.

a blog for all seasons

The other day it occurred to me that I was going into fall & winter with spring graphics. It seems a better thing to have an all-weather/all-season blog design. Isn’t this Trina Clark clip art great? I recently put together a blog design for my niece using Trina Clark’s school clip art and really loved how colorful it was. So much so, I wanted to do one for myself. I love this house, sun, and daisies and all the bold country colors. So that is where this look has come from. I am thinking, now that I critique it, that there is too much busyness, but I love all the color, and I think this is fun for a change.

There are so many times in a day that I think of blogging about something. I really would like to blog regularly, but I can never seem to fit everything into one day. I’m going to try though. I do miss blogging. My summer was so busy, there were things to blog about, but to find the time. Also, please forgive me for never visiting or replying to comments. That sounds so lame, but I just have not been visiting at all these last months and barely blogging as it is. I have been a hit and run blogger.

Hey, how about that Bibi Netanyahu at the UN yesterday?! Every time he says “my people” I just think wow. What if we had a leader who would speak with such pride in his nation?

I’m just sayin’

wow. You know how I go back and forth about whether or not to include my political feelings in my regular blog postings – so that’s what the new “I’m just sayin’ . . . “ tab is for and generally I’m going to post these things in separate posts, I think, because –frankly? I am uncomfortable writing about something nice like family stuff or exciting like Molly’s books and then switch gears and just vomit all over my vehement feelings for this current administration and YET it's like how can I NOT say something?! This country, the leadership, is just getting more and more bizarre.

I am posting this video to show both the absurdity and the horror of what is happening in this country. The part at 2:36 referencing “all are equal in his sight” as opposed to “all are precious in His sight” offends me more than most things that have happened so far.

 

This video also upsets me every time I hear it. If you voted for obama, did you vote for THIS? “We are ..Days Away From Fundamentally Transforming The United States of America” Did you vote for him to do the things he's doing? If you did, I can’t understand why. I wish people who feel there is something so wrong with this wonderful country would just go live somewhere else.

Scrapbooking tool of a different sort

I ran across a blog post the other day describing how to organize digital scrapbooking files and folders on your computer. Since beginning digital scrapbooking, that is a large part of what I keep on my computer. Way too much, actually, but that is a different post.

Everyone will have their own way of organizing, depending on what you have be it only kits or more. I happen also to collect commercial use items for making my own papers and elements and am always so grateful to those who share free templates and mini kits, etc. That usually  yields a sizeable amount of zip files to unzip. So. I was really excited to read this blog post which mentions a little program called Extract Now which unzips multiple zip files at once.  Amazing! Especially if you didn’t know that could be done. I love it and wanted to share in case it will be new to you too.

Summer is waning

Summer feels half over, or is it actually? and I have yet to just consciously let summer wash over me with all of its seemingly endless-feeling, warm-breezy, loveliness.  Normally, our life is very quiet and slow (although that never seems to translate into not busy), but this summer has been as busy as it feels. I’m already feeling like I should prepare for the coming school year (although this year I will have only 1 to teach! and how weird will that be?) I must concentrate on just “doing” summer one of these days.

We had a very lovely time away recently. My brother who lives in Alaska came down with his wonderful little family to visit. It happened that it was just me (sans sisters) and my three brothers and our families staying with Mom and Dad. It was a wonderfully relaxing time, and we also celebrated my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary!

Since returning I have been trying to get back into the groove, trying to get organized, trying to make myself do the things I need to do. I have spent a fair amount of time lately blessing my computer with gritted teeth, along with routers that seem not to work, and malfunctions which leave card readers not working. I'm beginning to edit Molly's next book in earnest which is good since she would like it to be done next month. Yikes! We’ve also been spending a lot of time as a family which is important to me as the kids get ever older, going for lots of four wheeler rides across the river which is shallow enough right now we can cross it with our little train of four-wheelers. We went bowling the other night. Exceptionally fun! They have a special every Wednesday night. Very soon we are going to double up and go with our friends (neighbors). I am really looking forward to that. We went to Lifest last Sunday, to see Jeremy Camp. Aside from five hours under a BRUTAL sun which claimed its share of sunburn, again! (I got burned so badly at Mom and Dad’s) we had a fabulous time, and I was so very impressed with Jeremy Camp. You know how we mothers are. I am just indebted to him for how he responded to my kids as they met him. So sincere, sweet, caring. Man. Made such a great memory. Good day.

with Mollyand Jacob and Sam

Though I have not accomplished any pages, I have had scrapbooking on my brain a lot lately. In my searches for various scrapbooking related things, I ran across an absolutely fascinating blog this afternoon, The Pioneer Woman. She has made and graciously offered great Photoshop actions! I fiddled with two photos and can’t wait to sink my fingers into more. This first one is our house, last summer. This action makes it look so pretty!

This second picture is the back field after the hay was baled by the river in the woods. I took this last summer also. I just love this picture.

Well, whatever else I was going to say has just escaped me! So I will close with that.