several of you have commented that the body text in my new, beautiful template is difficult to read on some computers. i’ve gone in and tinkered with the css (and also figured out how to get my lowercase letters back (at least mostly) woot!). is this version easier to read? (i’m also interested to know how many of you had or did not have funky font readability issues before the change, so any and all responses are helpful.) thanks!
the creators of the “jazzy apps” asked if i’d be willing to test out and review their newest app–jazzy world tour.
here are my thoughts:
–the artwork is high quality and charming.
–the app does a fairly good job of directing pre-readers through the app with verbal cues, but if your child doesn’t listen to the instructions, it’s not highly intuitive that you’re supposed to click on the flags instead of on the other fun (and sometimes larger) images:
for instance, if you click on the hot air balloon, it just takes you back to the initial “landing page” which i’m not sure why you would want to return to. clicking on the gigantic “i” in a circle takes you to the boring grown-up information page. clicking on the boats makes little waves-splashing sounds, but they don’t move or anything (irritating to my transportation obsessed son).
–when you finally do click on a flag, you’re taken to a landing page for that country and given the choices of “play” “learn” and “create.”
“play” (see top image in this post) gives you a screen with a variety of animals native to that region (with the exception of the two main character cats who visit each country), most with musical instruments. when you touch each character, they play their instrument (or throw a boomerang or go for a run or something else). this is marginally interesting in that you get to hear what these unusual instruments sound like (or at least a small soundbyte sampling).
“learn” is a picture dictionary of instruments, animals and other cultural objects that the region is known for. click on the picture and see/hear a definition.
“create” is a moving/talking sticker book that allows users to drag images from the bottom bar (that scrolls to reveal many different images) into the scene above and either take a photo or make a video that can be saved in the travel scrapbook (seen in the top right corner of the second image in this post) or shared with friends via e-mail, facebook, youtube or twitter. the video capability is the most interesting element of the entire app. kids can make up their own narrative story using the pictures and characters in the scene provided. each character comes with its own pre-determined sound (meowing, mooing, etc.) and motion (head nodding, mooing) but users can also record their own voices speaking so that the “stickers” can be used more like puppets greatly increasing the pre-literacy skills value of this app by incorporating a true story-telling element.
–perhaps the happy toddler isn’t the target audience for this app (he’s three, maybe an older user would engage with it more?) but he was… not impressed. we played with it together for a short while for the first time, peeking into each of the countries, but as soon as we were done with that, he was ready to move on to other apps and he’s been uninterested in returning to it again.
–with an adult and child working together, i could see this app contributing an interactive element to a homeschool lesson learning about one of these world cultures. education seems to be the app’s main goal, and it does a fine job of that, but at least for our family, this app did not provide hours of endless entertainment.
*note:Â other than receiving a free copy of the app to review, i was in no other way compensated for this post and these opinions are all my own.
this one’s a bit more zen than usual. happy holiday monday!
i know you’ve all* been waiting with bated breath!
*my mom
couldn’t decide which pair of shoes i liked better (so i wore the blue ones because they are miles more comfortable!), couldn’t decide whether to wear the necklace or the “scarf” (so i wore both) and, although the temp rose higher than 80 today, it was chilly at work (grrr… a/c too cold….), so the sweater was actually appreciated and worn for most of the day. i felt colorful, bright and i’m loving the color of these shorts (although looking at these photos i’m wondering if they’re hitting me at a bad height?)
two weeks ago, i spent a sunday afternoon at madtown mama‘s house, learning (again) how to make pasta from scratch. i say “again” because she taught me several years ago, but it took me awhile to acquire my own pasta maker (the tool that rolls the dough flat and cuts it into lovely ribbons) and in the meantime, i totally forgot everything she’d said and when i tried the pasta machine out on my own, it was a complete disaster.
when i called to see if she’d teach me again, she said that her husband actually had more pasta experience, so i wheedled him into showing me the ropes. the photos you see in this post are my first solo attempt after that tutorial. they turned out so lovely and delicate and delicious! here’s the quickie instructions i followed:
combine (approx.) 2 cups semolina flour, 2 eggs (you might need to add another if they’re small and the dough is too dry), a few glugs of olive oil and a generous pinch of salt. knead by hand for a long time until the dough comes together to form a smooth, uniform ball. you may need to add a bit more oil, or another egg if it’s too crumbly, or more flour if it’s too sticky or wet. (see why i wanted an in-person tutorial?) the semolina is a coarser flour than all-purpose, but don’t worry about the slight grittiness–it will go away when cooked.
divide the dough into 6 portions and roll each portion somewhat flat. feed each flattened portion through the pasta machine rollers, gradually adjusting the rollers. you’ll probably need to go down four or five notches. if you want to cut the skinny size, you want the sheets to be slightly thicker and if you’re cutting linguine, roll them a notch thinner.
when they’re the thickness you think will work, run them through the cutting rollers. it helps to have someone else to turn the crank while you feed the pasta through with one hand and catch the cut noodles with your other hand. if the rollers don’t cut all the way through, re-roll your dough (perhaps a teeny bit thicker) and lightly flour both surfaces of the dough before sending it through again.
once the noodles are cut, hang them on a drying rack. if you allow them to dry for several hours, they will be brittle and break when you try to unload them off the drying rack, but they will still taste delicious. add to boiling, well-salted water and cook for 4-5 minutes, or until desired consistency is reached.
i got my first non-spam anonymous comment! readers who leave anonymous comments often feel uncomfortable leaving their name because they feel that their comment is a negative one, but in this instance, the commenter simply asked, “How did you “design” this quilt? The pattern is in the “Modern Quilt Workshop” book since 2005.” which i am pleased to be able to respond to. although i’m sure i read through the modern quilt workshop book when it first came out, i had forgotten that there was a bookshelf quilt in it, so i first went to find the book and see where the similarities between our quilts lie. conveniently, google books gives us an inside peek into the book and we can see the exact page describing the quilt they’ve titled “book club.” indeed, “book club” is a quilt meant to represent a full bookshelf, just as mine has been compared to a bookshelf. here are some other things i noticed:
1. “book club” has a few tilted, slanty books in the mix and also includes borders below each row of books and around the edge of the quilt to represent the bookshelf itself. “overdue” by very careful design has only vertical books and no visible “shelf” (i’ve even carried the booklines though the binding to maintain that image of floating rows of vertical lines of color). these subtle differences make a huge difference (at least to me) in the overall “feel” of the quilt and were purposeful design decisions.
2. both times that i showed my quilt at our local modern quilt guild meetings (when it was just a finished top and after it was quilted), i had other guild members approach me afterwards to show me pictures of bookshelf quilts they’d made. although both were lovely, neither of their quilts looked much like “book club” or “overdue.” a quick google images search for “bookshelf quilt” reveals a wiiiiide variety of designs. my guess is that people have been making bookshelf quilts since long before 2005 and everyone has their own interpretation, from very abstract to very literal. that is the joy of the creative process–taking inspiration from other works and from the world around you and figuring out your own interpretation.
so, to answer the original question, when i said that i “designed” my quilt, i was referring to the process i went through to decide how i wanted my particular quilt to look–from piecing to quilting. if you’d like to read more about my thought process while planning the quilt and what inspired me to develop my own interpretation of a “bookshelf” design, i encourage you to read my original post on the common threads quilting bee blog. if you’re interested in reading about how the quilting design evolved, please read this post on the in a stitch quilting blog.
thank you for asking for clarification. i always find conversations about creative inspiration to be fascinating and complex.
in case it’s been awhile since you’ve visited my blog directly (instead of through an rss feed), i’d like to invite you over to see my new look! it’s a design by the amazing patricia of mirabelleza (an etsy shop which is, sadly, currently closed!) and i have been swooning over it all evening. the story of how i came to by the use of this template is too long and twisty to tell here, but in the end, i’ll just say that i am absolutely amazed at the generosity of patricia and wish her the very, very best in her new endeavors!
i’ve begun reading short chapter books with lots of pictures to the happy little dude before bed each night. we still read a picture book or two each night in addition to a few chapters from a longer book, but i wanted to start working on longer books just to see if he could follow them. plus, i tend to get tired of reading the same picture books over and over and over and over, and we can usually get away with reading chapter books only once (or maybe i read them once and mr. happy staff reads them once and then we can take them back to the library). i’ve tried to steer away from books with human characters that are way older than he is (the early elementary students who are usually reading these titles and are therefore their target audience), and that leaves us largely with personified animal books. fine with us! here are a few series and titles we’ve enjoyed recently:
down girl and sit by lucy nolan  “down girl” is the narrator dog for these stories about her adventures with the next-door dog named “sit” and her owner named “rruff” and the cat next door named “here, kitty kitty.”
moose and hildy by stephanie greene a pig and moose are unlikely, but endearing best friends. be aware, if you read the whole series, that “pig pickin'” deals with the threat of hildy (the pig) becoming barbeque (she avoids that fate, but it might be disturbing for vegetarians to read?).
maybelle by katie speck maybelle the cockroach and her best friend (a flea) live in the peabody’s house where everything is “just so.” what happens when maybelle gets too interested in trying out food that is fresh?
flat stanley by jeff brown  stanley becomes flat when a bulletin board on his bedroom wall falls down on top of him. flatness, as it turns out, has its advantages! we’ve only read one of these so far. they might be a little old for the happy little dude? but apparently… there’s an app!
my father’s dragon by ruth stiles gannett  a classic title with some old-fashioned values (i did a bit of editing on the fly when his mother beat the cat before throwing it out the back door in chapter 1). happy little dude is looking forward to reading the second in the series.
lulu and the brontosaurus by judith viorst  reading this to a three-year-old who is still throwing tantrums and doesn’t necessarily understand that lulu is old enough that she shouldn’t be throwing tantrums is risky business. i’m never quite sure if he’s getting ideas about how to manipulate us, or just enjoying the story…
welcome to the bed & biscuit by joan davenport carris  we’re reading this one right now and i’m enjoying the gentle plot line and the loveable characters and the illustrations. although there are a few two-page spreads with no pictures that make a certain listener very antsy, when i ask him questions about the story, he can answer them correctly, so i know he’s listening. tip for anyone attempting this in your own home–if your pre-reader child gets wiggly while you’re working your way through a long block of text, run your finger under the words you’re reading to let them know where you are (almost done!) and to re-iterate the “print awareness” knowledge (i.e. “those letters spell out the words that mom is reading”). if you’re presenting this title to a beginning reader, you should know that the vocabulary is not simple! tonight’s selection included the word, “lugubrious!”
others i’m looking forward to reading:
the trouble with chickens by doreen cronin
any favorites in this genre/reading level that your family would recommend?
