What To Do With Pictures

So you take a bajillion pictures, just like I told ya.  You find some good ones.  The not-quite-good ones, you edit in picmonkey.  And then what?  You can print some for your Gramma.  She'll like them.  But then what?  Remember scrapbooking?  Remember the craze, where people were buying ribbons and saving stubs and it was all "how embellished can you make your pages" craziness?

Yeah, I did that.  For about a year.  And then I got engaged, and I quit.  Cold turkey.  It was hard, you know, having free time again?  And not having my house littered with paper scraps and hole punches and stickers, stickers everywhere.  

But at the same time, as I relished my freedom from double-sided tape, I missed the awesome memory books.  So I tried just taping the pictures in a book but, uhm... yeah, not so fancy.  And then I quit taping them now I have a book with 4-7 pictures shoved in between each set of pages.  So that's not helping anybody, and that's not providing me with memorable moments.

Enter - shutterfly.  Now, shutterfly has no idea who I am.  But I used them to create a book for the "I'm pregnant and here's the photographic proof" book, and I loved it.  So of course when I realized that I wanted to make a book for RG's first year, they were the natural choice.

Why I Love & (Nearly) Hate Jen Hatmaker

ASIDE: The content of this post is serious and lengthy.  In an unrelated story, I wanted to tell you that my neighbor showed up at my door today, having picked all of my ripe tomatoes, because she didn't want them to go bad.  She handed me a basket of over 6 pounds of my own tomatoes.  A handful of them weren't ripe.  It was bizarre.  Tomato recipes now being accepted.

First, let's state the obvious about Jen Hatmaker: she's awesome.  Like, grab a cup of salsa & laugh for hours, awesome.  Like, good thing Austin is so far away from me or I'd have to consider staking, awesome.  She's funny.  She loves food & laughing.  She's a hot mess.  I love that in a person.  The ability to be a mess, and yet still trick people into thinking you're functioning.  It's basically my mantra, my family crest.

And then, there's the other side of the coin.  That girl will just not stop writing dang books.  And not just any books.  If she'd write a cookbook, or even illustrate a children's book, I wouldn't hold it against her.  But nooo...  Girlfriend's got to write radical, God-moving, life-changing books.  "Bah!" and "Hooray!" all in the same breath.

Yes, a person must change.  Heck, anything that breathes must change or die.  So in theory, I suppose I like change (since I like breathing and all...).  But change is hard, and change is uncomfortable, and change like the type that Jen's books call out to... well, it makes you see your own ugly first.  That's probably the hardest part.

Happy Ending

I stayed up waaaaay too late last night reading this book:

Kindle edition is free.
But it made me angry.
Choose wisely.

Like, should have just stayed awake all night, late.  And up until 98% done, I was pretty pleased with it.  It's a YA (young adult) book, I believe, and it was cute.  A little intrigue, a little romance, [spoiler alert!] girl picks the right guy, voila, a great story with a happy ending.

And then.  Oooh and then.

The 99% [not political] point came.

A twist.  A turn.  Turns out the good guy might be the bad guy, and even though the bad guy is not the great guy, he might have been the better one but you'll just have to buy the next book to find out.  Oh that burns me.  I hate to have put all of that effort into reading a book, just to be left with a feeling of dissatisfaction at the end.  I want the good guy to really be good, love to last forever, and truth to conquer all.  I know real life isn't always pretty; that's why I read fiction.  

Do you feel me?  Do you like the suspense, the twists and turns?  Or are you a true blue romantic like me?  

I know this post is random.  I know it's totally not in keeping with thankfulness or the holidays or anything.  Please don't hold it against me.  I promise to be in the holiday spirit from here on out.  I just had to get that out.  FTR, I do wish you the happiest of Thanksgivings, and I'm thankful you stopped by.  Now go eat turkey.

Excited for Macy's to kick off the holidays,

TFW

Toothpaste and Goats

I purchased the Better World Shopping Guide last week, and I couldn't put it down.  It might not sound like a best-seller to you, but I was instantly sucked into it's pages and couldn't get enough!  

For those of you not yet sucked in by this book, let me tell you about it.  The BWSG, as those of us in the know call it, (okay, actually just me) is a book that rates companies based on factors such as:

• Environmental Sustainability
• Human Rights
• Community Involvement
• Animal Protection
• Social Justice

The companies are then assigned a score (A+ through F-).  These companies are arranged by category, so that a consumer wishing to buy toothpaste responsibly can look up the category "Tooth Care" and find out the best and worst companies to support with their purchase. 

 v.s 

And that is really the crux of it; we support the companies we buy from.  This has never bothered me before, and I've just mindlessly consumed whatever I wanted, generally looking for the best deal.  It never crossed my mind that perhaps those jeans were only $11.50 because the person who made them halfway around the world only got paid $1.50 that day.  

I'm not all green and granola-y, (although what follows may persuade you otherwise), and I don't give that much of a hoot about whether those companies protect animals or offset their carbon footprint.  Yes, I think we should protect animals, but I bought the book because I was more concerned with the human element.  

The night in review

Dang.  I think I did it again.  

I used a great title for a less-than-amazing post.

I wish I could stop myself.  I wish I could think of these awesome titles when it comes time to write an awesome blog post.  I wish I had a snowcone machine and many many leather bound books.  I wish all cockroaches everywhere would drop dead.

However, all of that is neither here nor there.  What has hit my mind and is thus flowing out my fingers is this:  I think it would be fun to review cookbooks.  I think that would be something I could be good at.  Here's my argument:

I am a regular person, and cookbooks need to be able to be used by regular people.  Ergo, I would be a good person to test out a cookbook.  I have fancy writing skills and can include words like "ergo" at appropriate moments to make a review sound sophisticated and intelligent.  I am nothing if not literate, and can therefore follow directions well.  I have years of mathematics skills just begging for an outlet, and cookbooks often contain fractions and possibly pesky scaling problems.  I can pass those tests with flying colors.  I like to cook and I like to read.  I'm pretty much smelling a match-made-in-heaven right here.  Aren't you smelling that, book publicists?  Don't you want to send me some books to review?

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*crickets*