Perler bead bowl

Perler bead bowl, originally uploaded by a-chan.

I found this project on Pinterest, where else? It's pretty self explanitory, but the directions were in Dutch so I googled "perler bead bowl" and got a bunch of hits.  The one I kind of followed was this one.  This was easy enough for Sabrina to help me with, but I still had to help get the beads in a single layer.

Some tips I found around the net:

The oven temp does not have be be exactly at 400F.  I did a different batch at 300F and it worked just the same.

Use a butter knife or plastic scraper to get the beads out of the bowl. 

Use any dish that can go in the oven for different shapes and sizes.  I used a small IKEA baking dish for mine, Sabrina used a Pampered Chef small glass measuring bowl.  My second one was a cheap silicone dish in the shape of a heart.     

50 books in 1 year, 6 month update

Well, the year is about half over and I'm over half way there!  Yes, some are easy books, but some are long books, too!  And a lot are ones I've never read before.  I'm loving my Kindle Fire, it makes reading during my pumping breaks super easy.  Plus, if I finish a book while I'm at work or on the train, I always have a back-up loaded just in case.



Every couple of years I go through a Ray Bradbury stage.  I'm thinking of doing it again this year in honor of his death; maybe in October.  I was going to do the same for Arthur C. Clark but I got distrackted with other things (he has been dead for several years). 

I just started Clash of Kings, I hope it doesn't take me the rest of the month to read.  But at least I'm in a good spot in my list.

January
1   Farmer Boy - Laura Ingalls Wilder
2   Little Men - Louisa May Alcott

February
3   Jo's Boys - Louisa May Alcott
4   Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austin
5   A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula Le Guin
6   Northanger Abbey - Jane Austin
7   Tales from Planet Earth - Arthur C. Clark
 
March
8   City of Masks - Mary Hoffman
9   Messenger - Lois Lowry
10 A Larger Universe - Gillaspy, James
11 The Black Pearl - Scott O'Dell
12 A Spell for Chameleon - Piers Anthony
 
April
13 City of Stars - Mary Hoffman
14 Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin
15 Island of the Blue Dolphin - Scott O'Dell
16 Mr. Popper's Penguins -
 
May
17 Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
18 The Borrowers - Mary Norton
19 The Borrowers Afield - Mary Norton
20 City of Flowers - Mary Hoffman
21 The Borrowers Afloat - Mary Norton
22 The Borrowers Aloft - Mary Norton
23 Before I Fall -
24 The Borrowers Avenged - Mary Norton
25 City of Secrets - Mary Hoffman
 
June
26 City of Ships - Mary Hoffman
27 Things Fall Apart -
28 The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich

Currently reading: Clash of Kings - George R. R. Martin
Queue: City of Swords - Mary Hoffman (released Aug?)

Old meme

I found this old meme in my "draft" and thought I would publish it.  I've updated it, I've read a few more of the books in the 3 years since I originally did it.

Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) put ? on the ones you've never heard of.
5) Tally your total at the bottom.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane AustenX
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X+
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte BronteX
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X+
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X (a lot of it, not front to back, though)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte *
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell *
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman *
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens *
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X+
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ?
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X+
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ?
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X+
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X+
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ?
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X+
34 Emma - Jane Austen *
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen *
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X+
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ?
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving ?
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ?
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X+
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ?
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood ?
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert *
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen *
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ?
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ?
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley *
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon ?
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ?
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie *
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker *
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X+
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ?
75 Ulysses - James Joyce X
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ?
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ?
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ?
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flauber
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ?
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ?
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ?
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ?
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X+
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


Total read: 27
Total loved: 12
Total planning to read: 11
Total never heard of: 13

Hmm... anything else?

I'm trying to come up with some things to bring me up to date with the blog.



We went to Hawaii again (seems to be a yearly event). And look!



My mom came with us! It was her first time in Hawaii in like 30 years. It was fun to share our "life" in Hawaii with her.



Sabrina & Nana:



The reason for our trip, Richard's cousin (Don) graduated from high school!



This is the tradition in Hawaii. Everyone piles leis on the graduate. It was kind of fun to watch. Someone holds a sign up with the graduate's picture/name so everyone can see where they are.

We didn't plan it this way, but our nephew (Alexander Pono, AJ for short... Alex Jr.) was born 2 weeks before we got there. We all had colds, so we had to wait a week before we could go see him. Isn't he cute? He's already crawling! I can't wait to see him this summer (if/when we go).





It's not a trip to Maui without doing some touristy things.



Like the Atlantis submarine (first time for this!). Sabrina was just barely tall enough.

My mom's gotta work on her shaka:



Uncle Alex took us to the high school's field to play with his dog (Kala).



And of course we spent time at the beach.



Shave ice at our new fave stand Ululani's



If you're ever on Maui, this is the shave ice to get! They make most of their own syrups (their webpage says it's now 100%) and they use Roselani's ice cream. Yum! Plus, they started in Portland (who knew, right?) We found out because I was wearing my Blazer shirt one day when we got shave ice and had a good conversation with the owner.

I take so many pictures, it's hard to choose which ones I like the best. Our first morning there, we took my mom up to Haleakala since it's like one of the #1 THINGS TO DO.



I really need to clean my camera (I'm a little scared and apparently camera shops won't do it). This is my fave, some people don't get it:



I guess that's all for now, I didn't realize how long this would get when I started!

50 books in one year, 2011 follow-up

When I last left this blog, I was professing how this was the year I was going to make my goal of 50 books. I didn't. But I've come to live with that. With knitting, working full time, and now having two kids... well, it just wasn't a practical goal. This year, my goal is 30 books. I think I can do it, maybe even more. I got a Kindle Fire so I can read while on my pumping breaks. I've already finished my first book of the year and most of the way through with a second.

Anyways, my last years list looks like this:

January
1 Gone-Away Lake - Elizabeth Enright
2 Return to Gone-Away Lake - Elizabeth Enright
3 The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey - Trenton Lee Stewart
4 The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoners Dilemma - Trenton Lee Stewart
February
5 The Stranger - Alburt Camus
March
6 The Glass Dragon - Irene Radford
7 The Perfect Princess - Irene Radford
8 The Loneliest Magician - Irene Radford
9 The Wizard’s Treasure - Irene Radford
10 Marionette’s, Inc. - Ray Bradbury
11 Harmony - C.F. Bentley/Irene Radford
April
12 Enigma - C.F. Bentley/Irene Radford
May
13 The Postman - David Brin
14-28. OZ series - L. Frank Baum
December
29. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

Not too bad, I guess. This year I'm going to try to read more books I've never read before. I'll still be doing some re-reading. I really want to make my way through LOTRs again and the Earthsea series.
This year's list:
January
1. Farmer Boy
2. Little Men
Currently reading: Jo's Boys