A bit of perspective?

Craig shared this with me this evening and I think it is both beautiful and profound on various levels. This was an entry in a film contest. It's short and I hope everyone will take a few minutes and watch it.

"Less Is More of the Day: Entrants in the Philips-sponsored constrained cinema competition “Tell It Your Way” were restricted to six lines of dialogue: “What is that?,” “It’s a unicorn,” “Never seen one up close before,” “Beautiful,” “Get away, get away,” and “I’m sorry.”

Keegan Wilcox’s Porcelain Unicorn, hand-picked as the Grand Prize Winner by director Ridley Scott, is making the rounds again today, and it’s certainly worth a second (and third, and fourth, and tenth) glance."

Politics again

Read/listened to or watched Obama's latest speech? I have a couple bones to pick... 

• Telling a large amount of the country they're being dumb -whether you agree with them at all or not- is not exactly a way to get support and solve problems
• If I have to carry a balanced budget in my own life, I damn well expect the government to do the same thing. Don't come crying to me because someone else is being irresponsible and spending more than they have. I have ZERO desire to "bail out" people who are being incredibly irresponsible financially. I am doing everything I can to get out of good debt (education, modest car, modest home) and I expect the same thing of our governing bodies. 
• Obama wants more tax revenue to come in. If everyone else wants to pay more taxes, fine, but don't ask me for anymore than I'm already paying. I have so much taken out of my paychecks I barely have anything left. I am not working as hard as I am to fund the governments' ridiculous spending. 
• If you're going to tax the "wealthy" make sure it is the same proportional rate as the "poor." Do NOT penalize people because they have worked hard, gotten an education, made something of themselves and BEEN RESPONSIBLE WITH THEIR SPENDING! 

In case you haven't fully understood my opinion on this topic, feel free to leave me a comment. I'd be happy to further explain. For now, I need to go cool off. 

Grown-up life is hard :/

So, apparently, it's a bit harder to get all of legal niceties taken care with a very small start-up business than I thought.

Things we currently have going for us:

• Customers coming to us
• Good products at reasonable prices
• Free website
• Free advertising
• I'm a girl (more on why that's good later) 
• FREE online accounting & small business software. It's amazing. 

Things that need to happen/change/ be completed:

• Make my IRS EIN # mean something so I can hire an employee
• Figure out what the real law is regarding home-based catering services
• Talk to the Community Action people about their sliding-scale small commercial kitchen rental

Apparently there are grants and classes available for women who are trying to start their own businesses in Utah. The emphasis and greater support is given to people who want to be able to hire other employees. I'm going to be looking in to this because really, I love catering. I love being my own boss. I love that Craig is amazing and tells me to figure out what I want to do and do it (and dump the rest of the time fillers but that's not a discussion for this blog.) The biggest problem now is making sure I have a facility I can use and that will meet my event preparation needs and not eat all of the profits of events. 

My newest dream is to someday to have a small little store front-type set up with a little office and modest size commercial kitchen. Starting a business (legally) is pretty intimidating. Any suggestions? 

A follow-up

I started this in the comments section of my previous post but it was taking up too much room.


I do apologize if I have offended anyone. That really wasn't my intention. My husband read this while he was in another room and I he let me know I was being a little ridiculous. Perhaps he let me know I was being more than "a little" ridiculous.

I'm just getting a tired of constantly being asked to help with projects that are quite below the capabilities of the scouts doing them. In my mind, these projects serve many purposes. The ones Jamie has outlined - serving "a need that an existing infrastructure doesn't already serve"- as well as having the scouts challenge themselves. I feel very strongly that the capstone project of scouting and young women's projects (a topic for another time) should be something they're proud of, that pushed them to be better, helped them learn about themselves and do more than they thought they could.


(By the way, Jamie, the benches to which I was referring are ones made out of 4 pieces of wood that come in a kit. Not the nice one you did- that's quite different.)

Again, that having been said, I understand different people have different abilities. I would NEVER look down on a scout -or anyone for that matter- who did a blood drive, built a bench, painted signs etc. that was going above & beyond what they thought they could do or their normal capabilities. The only problem I see with these is that it doesn't push most capable young men to be more.

Again, I do apologize if my frustrations at finding another note on our front door and subsequent rantings here offended anyone. And with that, I'm off to figure out how to bake BYU mint brownies that are gluten free. If I find success, I'll be sure to post the recipe here!

Pet peeve #10

This is for all the real Eagle Scouts

Young teenage boys doing EASY Eagle Projects.

Today we received a paper on our front door looking for toy donations. The kid is going to clean the ones that aren't clean enough for donating for his project. But don't worry, he won't be over-exurting himself or doing too much work- "ask your kids to do it! They'll love to help!" Who approves these things? Seriously!

Ever seen that "RM" movie? Remember the exchange that goes something like this: 

Mom- "The twins almost have their Eagle."

Twins- "Mom almost has our Eagle."

NOT the point, people! 

Other things I've seen that are NOT Eagle Projects in my mind: 

-Mulching a church yard

-Painting a map of the US on a playground

-Blood drives (NO! NO! NO! NO!) 

-Just about any collection project

-Building A picnic table/bench

-Painting fire hydrants on A street

... We've all seen them. Do I really need to go on?

.....

Please do not take this the wrong way. I think all of the above mentioned things are fantastic and worthwhile, however, I do not believe they are worthy of a potential Eagle Scout. Stop with all of the soft projects - keep the rank of Eagle where it should be. 

Perhaps I'm picky but my brother's project is and will continue to be my standard of comparison for good projects. What did he do, you may ask? Well, he put in a cross-country course that was over a mile long through New Hampshire woods at the then brand new Cawley Middle School in Hooksett. Never been to NH? This will give you an idea of what sort of foliage had to be cleared & worked with.

Bryan would likely be mortified if he knew I was talking about him like this but let's get something straight: I am very proud of my older brother and what he did and the example he was to the younger scouts and all of the MANY volunteers and companies that contributed to this massive undertaking. Should we ever have a/some boy(s), they will know what their Uncle Bryan did and what it really means to be a card-carrying Eagle Scout.




(Heaven help those poor children if we have boys!)

Our Garden

Craig watering the zucchini

Snap peas

Bush beans 

So, remember that post from a couple months ago when I promised I'd upload pictures of our garden plot? Remember how I never did? Oh, well, I snapped some (poor quality) pictures on Craig's phone today while we were out on our afternoon walk & watering. When Kathryn - the lady who is in charge of the neighborhood garden plots & the one who helped me learn quite a lot about how to successfully grow things in Utah - saw how many squash & zucchini plants we had planted, she said quite seriously that we were going to have a "squash-splosion." I wasn't quite sure considering I had already killed a few plants. Well, she was right. On one plant alone today we had 16 flowers with zucchini buds growing. We harvested 3 of the larges crook necks yesterday and there were 4 more ready today. It's a good thing we love squash. If the tomatoes would hurry up and ripen, I'd just start making huge batches of my tomato squash pasta sauce. Hmmm ... I guess this means I'm going to need to learn how to jar stuff. I'm sure I can find a tutorial online somewhere. Anyway, I've posted the low-quality pictures I have of our garden. Don't mind the fact that it's out in the middle of the undeveloped area in the neighborhood or the fact that our plot is immediate neighbors with a farmers alfalfa field. Just notice all the wonderful things we're growing: Carrots, Squash, Zucchini, 3 varieties of tomatoes, snap peas, bush beans, lettuce, bell peppers, onions (it might be dead...), strawberries, jalapeno (just one), weeds. Not on purpose, but it is awfully difficult to keep up with them when the garden plot is in the middle of a weed field.

Our garden plot. See the farm from
along the edge of our plot?

3 of the 4 tomato plants

Squash & zucchini 

A mish-mash

Firstly- Sophie discovered that it is SUPER fun to pull up using the side rails in her crib while mommy is  grabbing a diaper right behind her. Oh, but that's not quite enough. No, it's even MORE fun when you learn how to jump up and down while holding on to your bed! I think we're officially doomed...


Secondly- I love my job! I was insecure about a few things before jumping back into assisting after having no practice for over a year. Embarrassing as it may be, I was nervous about suctioning. Yes, that little thing that you hardly notice while you're in the dentists chair. Well, as an assistant, you have to anticipate where the dentist is going to be and move and be ready before s/he is there. X-rays- no problem. Suctioning, no problem. Polishing, easy easy. Obnoxious? Phone calls. I can do that, just don't like it. I don't like talking on the phone much. Oh, well.



Thirdly- I'm pretty proud of our latest grocery shopping trip. And by "our" I mean Sophie and I - Craig was at a nerdmongerry fest in Salt Lake again.

Price-matched items:

• Pillsbury brownies ($1.50 at Walmart, matched to $.89) 
• Hillshire Farm lunch meat - a total of 4 lbs ($13 at Walmart, matched to $9.99) 

....... Savings of: $3.62

Coupons:

• Toaster Struedals: $4.54 (for 12) .... $1 off
• Gerber mini meals: $1.28 .... $1 off
•  2 lbs of jack cheese: $4.48 .... $1 off
• 12 slices of sargento lunch cheese: $2.48 .... $1 off
• Gerber good start formula: $6.26 ... $4.50 off
• Yoplait yogurt  fridge pack: $3.48 (ROLL BACK!) .... $1 off
• Pom. lemonade: $2.68 .... $1 off
• 2 Grown up lunchables: $5.00 ... $1.50 off
• Brownies: $.89 each .... $1 off each 
• Bananas: $.45 a lb (advertised at $.52 ... $.07) 
• Other assorted roll backs etc. $8.75

....... Savings of: $22.75

    

    

Happy 7 months, Sophie Brooke!

Sophie enjoys playing with her kitten...
more than the kitten likes!

That's right- our little Sophie-line is 7 months young today! And how did she spend it? Well, she threw (up) her own party, went to visit the Dr. Dr. and got to splash as much as she wanted in her bath before being snuggled to sleep.

Our sweet little Sophie loves to crawl super fast chasing the cats, grab their tails, crawl/walk on her hands and feet, stand up and dance until she falls and try new foods... we've still been able to avoid the cat food soup experiment that I'm sure is coming.

We love our Sophie!

Sweet little Sophie

Sophie loves her daddy. Especially
 playtime at the ladybug park

Sophie loves camping- she has been
twice already! 

Hmmm...

Why are the scrubs always gone? 

Seriously, I'm getting things together so the remainder of the week goes smoothly (I start my new job tomorrow) and I can only find one pair of scrub pants. Two tops, though. I don't want to come home and do laundry tomorrow. Oh, scrubs, please find your way back to me- and soon!

Not just for my little girl

A friend of mine recently shared this link to a great article. I've tried several times to give a good synopsis, but I just can't do it justice. Basically, the author discusses how to talk to little girls and how important it is to choose carefully the topic. My sister-in-law has a great quote on her blog that this made me think of:

We must be so careful in speaking to a child. What we say or don’t say, how we say it and when is so very, very important in shaping a child’s view of himself or herself. But it is even more important in shaping that child’s faith in us and their faith in God. Be constructive in your comments to a child—always.

--Jeffrey R. Holland

Give it a read. Let me know what you think. 

Another post about savings

I've started printing coupons -we don't get the Sunday paper or anything- and price matching at Walmart. I don't spend a ton of time doing it and I am NOT planning on becoming an "extreme couponer." However, on our small shopping trip this week, between price matching about 9 items and using 4 coupons (just 4!) we saved over $10. They were things I was planning on getting anyway, things we needed. Milk ($.75 off), juice ($2.88), eggs, lunch meat ($2.28 for 1 pound), bread (2 for $2.75), yogurt ($.75 off), some fruit (2 lbs for $2), roma tomatoes ($.69 for 2 lbs) and a couple boxes of breakfast cereal (2 for $3).

Why the new post? Just to share a couple quick ways to save this week/month.

• The best coupons are available the first of the month and today is, well, the very first of the month
• Check out Coupons.com, pillsbury.com, etc. & "clip" the coupons you would use on things you're already planning on getting
• Print as many as it will let you, save & use as needed. 
• Check the ad's that come in the mail & see if things are on sale (I got 2 dozen eggs for $0.69 just by ad-matching Buy Low's ad) & then use coupons on those, too
• Shop as usual & save a few dollars