Purses on sale - let's hope I can resist!

I'm not a diehard purse girl, but I have been coming around to the appeal of real leather, quality construction, and classic design.  Look at these two beauties and they're 30% off!  I'd probably go with the "Sand" for the Flatiron small shoulder bag and "Chalk" for the Nantucket small shoulder bag.  But what if I had to choose just one???  Might be time to start cashing in the Amex reward points... although I really think those should go toward supporting my gardening habit.

http://www.bananarepublic.com/browse/product.do?cid=45587&pid=625988&scid=625988012

http://www.bananarepublic.com/browse/product.do?cid=45587&pid=625510&scid=625510012

-15F on the way to work

Brrrrr... the cold is miserable this week.  Allegedly the cold should lessen today as highs of 10F are predicted and lows tonight of ~0F.  The good news is that I could see a glimmer of light on the horizon when I was driving home at 5:40pm last night and it's been much brighter in the mornings.  My psyche needs that to get through the winter.

Rob to the rescue...

Rob to the rescue!  I've been trying to rip all of our CDs to finally integrate our music collection into a single place.  And I am of course fanatical about the song tags.  Here's a great tip for naming songs that can't be identified by CDDB.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/04/AR2008070400062.html

Fast Forward's Help File

By Rob Pegoraro

Sunday, July 6, 2008; Page F02

Q I've got an old mix CD, and I don't know the names of all the songs on it. Is there any way to look them up online?

A Music-manager programs such as iTunes and Windows Media Player can look up song titles on mass-produced CDs by matching the sequence of track times to an online database, but they can't do that with one-of-a-kind or few-of-a-kind compilations.

Assuming you're not dealing with instrumentals, you can try searching the Web for an unusual phrase in an unknown song's lyrics. But you may have better results with a specialized music-tagging program that will analyze multiple characteristics in a song, not just its time, to identify it.

A site called MusicBrainz ( http://musicbrainz.org) offers a few free programs to do this job, such as Picard for Windows and the charmingly named iEatBrainz for Mac OS X. I tested the latter -- a simple program that elegantly integrates with your iTunes library -- on two mix-CD mystery tracks, and it labeled both correctly.

Replacing our windows - resources

http://www.glassworksvt.com/index.php

http://cjshomeimprovementscom.nxg.superpageshosting.com/contact.nxg (Note the 10% off coupon)

http://www.windowworld.com/ (A few sketchy reviews online)

homedepot.com  (Have to visit in person)

lowes.com  (Have to visit in person, in home visit costs a fee and is done later in the planning process)

Retiring Xmas

We finally packed up the tree, lights, and other various decorations on Saturday (10Jan).  It's sad to lose the festive lights and the cats seem to really miss being under the tree.  But the living room looks nice and open again!

More hungry hippos?

I refilled the seed bird feeder on Sunday.  They are eating through it in less than a week now.  I picked up a sunflower seed mix from Home Depot that is pretty popular.  I think the woodpeckers are the biggest culprits and unfortunately they've been attracting the squirrels too.  I guess Jamba will have to go regulate when it gets a bit warmer!

Vicious Cold Snap

Brrr... it's been really cold lately and about to get colder - we're due for a high of 0F on Wednesday.  Part of the cold snap is the lack of cloud cover, which actually has been nice since it's a full moon.  It's been like daylight outside at night with the snow on the ground and brilliant moon.  Of course it's too cold to actually enjoy being outside looking at the stars!

Fantastic stationary

From a random issue of Organic Style (which I did not even knew existed!) in 2005, I tore a sheet out about Old School Stationers. Now that I finally get around to looking them up, they have a great website. I'm glad I didn't give up on this because of the time that lapsed. Here are some of my favorites:




http://oldschoolstationers.com/index.html

CB2 finds...

I adore this rug... maybe this is the solution for our bedroom?
http://www.cb2.com/family.aspx?c=170&f=5138



This is what I need to hang aprons on in the kitchen!
http://www.cb2.com/family.aspx?c=598&f=5182




I am curiously drawn to this bookshelf (on the left) and I think I know why... It looks like the Ikea one I have been eyeing up for some time (on the right ) but for a whopping $180 less. If only Ikea wasn't so far away and we had a bigger car. Oh well, I'm sure we'll mount up a trip sometime soon.


http://www.cb2.com/family.aspx?c=302&f=4968&q=hancock&fromLocation=Search&DIMID=400001&SearchPage=1)
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70114753

More incentive to do self-manicures?

I never really buy new nail polish, but I am intrigued by these new products...



http://www.stephscloset.com/blog/beauty/2009/01/429/new-from-sally-easy-to-use-nail-art-pens/

Argh, the second one is a new line also by Sally Hansen called "insta-dri nail color" that has a short wide brush that claims to cover a nail in a single wipe. For some reason, Sally Hansen is nationally advertising these products but does not have them on their website? how strange is that?

Adorable ottoman

This is so cute - a couple would be perfect for the living room. Can't decide if I would go with brown for the current theme of the room or start thinking ahead to the united LR/kitchen, in which case I would pick grey. Seems to be online only, so I can't swing by the store and check them out in person.



http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.jsp?id=16018475&_requestid=114768

Piles of magazine sheets

I heavily utilize magazines for recipes, inspirations, "how to", reference, etc. But now I am stuck with giant stacks of raggedy torn sheets. I made it through all of my stack this week to divide into a few subpiles -- recipes, keepers (projects, reference, design ideas, etc.), and "stuff I want."

I'm really not sure what to do with the recipes. Many sheets have more than one recipe on them and I can't attribute all of them. It's too complicated and frankly too much volume to integrate into my paper recipe files.

Potential approaches -

-scan them all and save as PDFs? (ugh, creates a fourth info stream on top of paper recipes, links, and cookbooks)
-try to find at least some online and integrate with links
-?

The other piles are a lot easier to deal with. I'll probably subdivide further and add comments/notes to emphasize my interest in them then put into folders.

Need my perogie fix

I somehow escaped CT without any perogies, which is a travesty. So I made a batch yesterday for lunch and to put some in the freezer for a snowy afternoon. I did a quarter of Grandma's recipe (using a whole egg and a yolk for the dough) and ended up with 33 perogies and 1-2 cups of sauerkraut leftover (before any of my tasting!)

Notes: I think I need to add more liquid to the sauerkraut and fewer spices. It overwhelms the perogie and is out of balance with the noodle. I also need to use more butter when serving!