Favorite Things- 2009

Favorite Books-
Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente. This gorgeous story about people finding a place they belong was hands down my favorite fiction out of the 400 or so books I've read in the last year. It stands out strongly. I really envy anyone who hasn't read it because they will get the chance to read it for the first time and I never will again.

Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey. A definite change from the Kushiel books, this book is about a young girl who is the child of a genetically altered soldier, she was born utterly without fear in a "safe zone" town between the US and Mexico. It's got a somewhat comic book feel to it and is very well written. As much as I like the new Naamah series, this was my favorite book by her this year.

The Illustrated Hassle-Free Make Your Own Clothes Book, don't be fooled by the clean cut girl on the cover. This is a re-release of an old hippie how to make your own clothes book. It's non-technical very easy to make simple clothing and just a lot of fun.

Cookin' With Coolio, a book I'm actually surprised made the list, but it's laugh out loud funny with some great easy recipes including some good vegetarian ones. I'm thinking of buying a copy of this for my sister.

Favorite new albums-
Marian Call's Got to Fly- Marian Call is a local singer I really love in a big nearly fangirl way. Our whole family enjoys going to her live shows. Last year for Christmas Mike got me a copy of Vanilla and I was hooked. Got to Fly is her Browncoat inspired album. I'll Still Be A Geek After Nobody Thinks It's Chic could be a geek anthem and it's lovely to listen to, It Was Good For You Too is her Saffron song and my best friend's favorite song on the album. Mike's favorite song is It's Good To Have Jayne On Your Side. Vera Flew the Coop is an imagined back story for the woman the gun is named for. I love the whole album.
Street Sweeper Social Club Boots Riley from political hip hop group The Coup (also very worth checking out) and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave released this album earlier this year. It's "music for the revolution". Tom wrote the music, Boots wrote the lyrics. Very political, very anti-establishment sung by Boots to Tom's driving hard rocking music. I love this album.  Two of the songs were previously released in the NIN/JA tour download if you got that when they went on tour.
Who Killed Amanda Palmer? alternate release. I don't know if this still available or not, but the original album is for sure. Hey, it's Amanda F****** Palmer working with Ben Folds. Favorite songs off the album- Ampersand and Blake Says, but the whole album is wonderful. If the alternate release is still available, there was a song on that was co-written with her boyfriend. I love his songs. I have the LaM songs he wrote and they are constantly on my playlists. Hopefully he'll write more songs with Amanda.
S.J. Tucker's Quartered- Songs of Palimpsest, the album stands alone I think, but if you've read the book.. favorite songs- The Girl With the Lion's Tail, We Are Shangri-La and November.

E's favorite new artists- Auriplane. She puts everything up for free, and E loves her music. E's favorite is Dancing Mad, and Marian Call.
William's favorites for the year are Voltaire, Street Sweeper Social Club and Tom Smith. Tom Smith's albums are on sale until the 3rd. Tom Smith is a filker who sings about all sorts of geekdoms William is a fan of.

Tom Smith, S.J. Tucker, Amanda Palmer and Auriplane links are to their sites. All other links are Amazon.com.

Name badges - rainbow beads printable

I recently got some Post-It Super Sticky Name Badges and decided to play around with a couple designs for making printable badges. If you don't want to buy a pack of labels, you can print it out on regular paper and use repositionable glue on the back. The PDF is HERE.

When my kids were babies I labeled *everything* I could in the house. The theory being that people refer the items regularly like the refrigerator and the television and seeing the word on the thing would help them associate letters to words quicker. People teased me about it of course, wondering if I'd forget what a door was, but I think it did help. I used masking tape and permanent markers. Repositionable easily removed labels would have been so much better. I'm not sure if anyone else can use this idea, but I did make a set of 8 labels with a few common household things on them.

You can download that pdf HERE.

The printables work with Avery 5395 or compatible.

New Crochet - Doily Earring Holders

I don't have a lot of use for doilies really. Every surface in my home except chairs seems to have books on it. Books decorate my home like knick knacks, paperbacks, hardbacks, vintage craft books, novels and more outdated unabridged dictionaries than anyone should have (which come in very handy for pressing flowers). Pretty lace bookmarks sure, but doilies, not so much.

I love making doilies though. I wind up giving a lot of them away to friends. Other than that, I also make bun holders and pretty lacy cozies for my nano which I get a lot of compliments on at the gym.

I picked up some size 10 thread and some macramé type brass rings at a local thrift store, and while I was watching tv this weekend with my husband, I decided they would work nicely for doilies made to fit to hang my earrings from. I'm awfully happy with how they turned out but I didn't keep notes while I was working.

I think using any doily pattern you like would work. Just follow the pattern until it's just shy of fitting in the ring, then attach it with crochet to the ring at regular intervals and add a loop for hanging. I don't use patterns for doilies. Working out the geometry and math for one while I'm crocheting is fun.

The patterns for skulls, penguins, roses and snowflakes are all available for free at Beadwork at BellaOnline, the chocolate covered strawberries, lollipops and ice cream cone patterns are part of a set you can buy at my Etsy store.

The holidays were fantastic. The teens loved their ipods, everyone ate well. Dad was happy with his present because all we got him was lots and lots of chocolate and cookies. Mike got me a new office chair with a built in massager. It feels good. I threatened to move into my office because it's so comfortable.

Honey Shortbread with printable recipe card

Down to crunch time for holiday gifts. Hopefully this helps!

I made this shortbread using a locally produced honey from Chugiak Heights Alaskan Honey. It's a wonderful wildflower honey with lots of flavor. You can either buy good local honey or gourmet honey and tie on the recipe cards or you could bake a few batches of shortbread and package it prettily with the recipe cards. I love shortbread and I'm working on an e-book of different recipes for it. This is one of my favorite variations. I used a combination of honey and white sugar, the honey adds a subtle warm flavor to the shortbread.

I used a white whole wheat unbleached flour for mine because it's one of the flours my family likes best.

Honey Shortbread
makes 8 wedges
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
2 Tablespoons honey
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 cup flour
Preheat oven to 300° F or 150°C
Cream butter, honey and sugar together.
Add half of flour, then add in the rest in increments until
dough is crumbly. Knead in the rest of the flour making
a soft workable dough. Pat into an 8 inch round cake pan.
Decorate edges with a fork and pierce with fork.
Score the wedges with a sharp knife. Bake for 20 minutes.
Turn off oven and let rest in hot oven for 10 minutes.
Take it out and cut wedges while still warm.
To decorate the shortbread with a fork, go around the edges with the flat of it to make pretty little score lines all around, then pierce the shortbread with the tines of the fork. Cut into 8 pieces.

For the recipe card, click on the image for the full sized version and print at 300 dpi or I have put it in a layout of 3 cards on one page in a PDF file you can download HERE

Happy Holidays!