Free History Newsletter Mini-Units

For those homeschoolers or teachers, etc.

You can sign up for a free newsletter (or just look in their archives) for short little mini-units of historical interest at Learning Through History News.

Little units with all kinds of links (primary sources, multimedia projects, etc) for topics like:
The Sphinx
The Silk Road
The War of 1812
Ellis Island
etc.

Wowser Wednesday - Dry Erase Plate

A lady in town posted her fun little dollar store project. She has cute home fashion sense, I see pictures of her decorations every now and then.

She says: A cute, but inexpensive, melamine-type plate or platter from the dollar store makes a GREAT dry erase board for the kitchen, with the help of ribbon, a plate rack (I used a cookbook holder) and, of course, dry erase markers. :) excuse my awful south-paw handwriting, please.

Track your website visitors

I don't know how many of you don't read my blog through a reader and have seen the new little map in the top right hand corner of my blog.

I use statcounter to track my visitors and where they are coming from whenever I am curious. And sometimes they are from such cool places as India, and sometimes I can even see that people of other language blogs are linking to me. I know that someone who writes in Chinese, Thai, and Spanish have all linked to my blog. Pretty fun.

So I thought I would share with my readers and show a map of people who are reading my blog. It just tracks where the readers' server is located. IPligence provided the map. In just a few days, It looks like I've had visitors from the USA, Australia, Canada, Italy, Ireland, UK, Poland, Maybe Hungary??, Germany, Brazil, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, India, Japan, OOH! Looks like really close to Dalian, China where I spent a summer, Indonesia, Thailand, The Philippines and New Zealand. Fun huh?

And the blinking ones are who is looking right now.

Cheap Salvaged Elastic

I needed elastic for some maternity pants and figured, why not salvaged?

Buy large-sized sweat or elastic waist pants or skirts with wide elastic or whatever size you need. Choose pants or items that have the least sewing through the elastic that you can find. Not that it hurts the elastic, just takes more time to get it out.

Take seam ripper and dislodge your elastic. Considering it cost me $2.59 to buy elastic for the last pair of pants I made, getting pants for $1 or less would be totally worth the about 20 minutes it took me to take the elastic out. And if you can cram as many items in a sack as I can on dollar day, my elastic only cost me 2.5 cents and time.

Don't throw away old sweats until you take out and save the elastic! I know I won't be doing that anymore.

Cheap Princess Party Game

Trying to come up with a Princess party game that would cost me nearly nothing, I came up with:

"Pin the Crown on the Princess" Not too original, but it wouldn't cost me much.

(Which I am sure can be adapted to any party as long as you can find an appropriate coloring page or draw one if you are so talented: Pin the Eye patch on the Pirate, Pin the tail on Eeyore, Pin the Stetson on the Cowboy, Pin the shoes on the Ballerina, Pin the number on the racecar, etc.)

I photocopied a coloring page of a princess coloring book with a princess whose head was fairly large. My niece colored it. Then I taped it to a door. Then I printed out multiple crowns (I googled crowns in Google images and picked one to copy and paste several times over in Word and printed out in Black and White). Then each girl colored their crown and put their first initial on it.

Then I taped a loop of masking tape on the back, blindfolded them and told them to get it the closest to the top of her head. Whoever was closest got to choose a jewelry item that was a party favor anyway. As each girl won, they bowed out of the game and chose a piece, and we kept going until the last two girls went and then both got to pick from what was left. Easy, and they liked the game.

Barbie Doll Cake

I watched this youtube video to get an idea of how to make a Barbie Doll Cake using things I already had.

I used 2 8" cake pans of one cake mix and a pyrex bowl with an 8" diameter opening for another full cake mix. I cut them were they bubbled up, so they sat flat on top one another, the bowl cake on top and upside down. Then I cut off used restaurant chopsticks and put two on each side of Barbie to anchor the cakes together. Then I cut out the middle hole with a knife and had to lift the cakes and have my niece shove the middle hole pieces down through the bottom.

I did not want to break any of your Barbies, so I thought 2 8" pans would be enough, but it wasn't, so I tossed her. Not wanting to spend the time to bake some more, I searched in your Barbie box for the Barbie that had legs jointed so much that she could bend her knees to 90 degree angles (In the picture where I am pulling her out, this is the configuration I had to put her in to fit). So she kind of squatted in your cake, she looks like a midget, but she was in there unbroken! Then I did a lame frosting job with a whipped frosting that didn't succumb to the paper smoothing treatment that the video shows works on buttercream frosting, and she waited in the refrigerator over night.

Beware: Barbie sheds Barbie hair in Barbie cake

Free White House Greetings

Happy Bday to my big 4 year old girl!

If you want a greeting card or congratulations card for your baby from the White House,

Or these special times too:

• Wedding (send your request after the event)
  
• Baby's birth or adoption of a child
  
• Retirement after at least 30 years on the same job
  
• Eagle Scout Award
  
• Girl Scout Gold Award
  
• Bar/Bat Mitzvah or equivalent religious occasion

Follow the directions here.

My first baby was welcomed by George and Laura Bush, hopefully come Thanksgiving, I'll be able to ask for Barack and Michelle Obama to welcome my tiny bundle. You'll simply receive an embossed stationary card with their ink stamped signatures, but someone takes the time to hand-write the address. A little bit of fun for your scrapbook to be had for the cost of a stamp. I'm curious to see if the sentiment changes with presidents.