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where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

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Coffee filters & paint – a dynamite combo

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Each year all the classes at St. John take turns decorating the cafeteria with art, and each year I remember to save art to put up for this purpose. Usually it’s not a big deal because our turn comes after our big Potato Bake dinner and we just move all the Mr. Potato Head decorations from the fellowship hall to the cafeteria – done and done.

Not this year. This year we got a different time slot and I totally forgot until we only had two days left to make something.

Panic!

I scavenged some paintings the children had done, and then we went into full-on elf mode. Crank out the art, children! (Well, actually a craft.)

We made some 3-D coffee filter flowers (not my invention). They have maximum impact for minimum effort. You staple 7-8 coffee filters together then paint them. We used liquid watercolors – a marvel of modern paint technology. (In a preschool room, regular in-the-pan watercolors exist for exactly one minute as separate colors, then they are all muddy.)

After they dry you crinkle and crimp (crimple?) the filters, starting with the top one and working your way down.

Pinch the bottom, not the top.

Keep going…..

Keep pinching! Pinch like there's not tomorrow!

Whew.

Staple to the top of a construction paper stem, add some leaves, and we. are. golden.

Magic moving picture ahead:
Coffee filter flowers

10 of Sunday’s minutes

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Happy Birthday to my sister, Keren! Woo-hoo!!

One of the signs of Spring is the scratch-scratch-scratching of Lloyd eating a can of frozen fruit cocktail. It’s been his treat of choice since …… forever, and I think it’s pretty funny because the energy he exerts scraping outweighs the calories in the fruit. It’s like a diet snack.

Well, no more.

Lauren: “Hey, is there another can?”

Lloyd: warily “Yes.”

Lauren: over her shoulder running to the basement “Cool. I gotta go get something.”

Shave and a can of fruit - six bits.

Using the patented tomato paste method.

Note the hastily wiped-off counter.

I got it at a thrift store.

A tasty treat that's good to eat.

I actually wound up smashing a fair amount of the fruit, but the shaved fruit was pronounced delicious and effort-free by Lloyd.

Pause.

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After watching ‘House’ last night, Lloyd zonked out on the couch and the internet died.

It was awful.

I tried restarting – nothing. I tried Lloyd’s computer – nothing. I tried Lloyd’s phone – nothing.

I curled up into a ball on the floor and waited until morning.

Now it’s two minutes before I have to leave the house and this is all I’ve got.

It is Charles’ birthday, though, so at least I got that up here.

Tell me something about your Tuesday. When I get home I have an enormous pile of books to move from upstairs to the basement. I bet you can’t top that.

That is weird.

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I started to write a post last night, but the pictures are messed up. While Lloyd was working on fixing it, I wrote a lame Saturday one, and now it is GONE. Seriously, it’s as if I dreamed it. Let me go look some more.

Nope, gone. Strange.

Well, I was asking you what you are going to do with your Saturday. We are having a satellite dish installed (for television, not for spying, dang it) then we have a bunch of errands to do. I’m sure Lloyd will be thrilled about that.

You?

UPDATE: Lloyd just found it. It’s at laurenandlauren.com Something is happening while some ‘name server’ is doing something, blah blah blah.

Oh, Canada

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A while back we went to a trivia night fundraiser for our school’s PTL. It was pretty fun, despite the fact that you have to know stuff. We’ve only done this twice, but I know now to enter into the evening prepared to be the dumbest one in the room. There were no questions about stuff I know, like…….. um……. how to sit on a stool in front of a computer for long stretches of time.

There are 10 categories, and the one that our table scored surprisingly high on was about Canada. It had a question about RUSH and Bob and Doug McKenzie!

Today I was sitting around – on my stool – and thought, “What if I learned the Canadian territories? I learned the countries in Asia, didn’t I?” (I have since forgotten nearly all of them.)

I came across a good mnemonic for them – the ones across the bottom go: Bill And Sally Make One Quart of Nothing. The ones across the top go You’re Not Naked. The little ‘maritimes’ are hit and miss. Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and the other one.

So, take this quiz! I bet I’ll find Quart before you will!