Anytime you shop online – go through Ebates.com! A lot of online stores are registered with them – and if you link through Ebates to place your order – you get a certain percent back on your order. For instance, I just had to order some gear for Mr MIP and went through Ebates and will get 4% back on my order. While that doesn’t sound like a lot – hey, it’s a rebate I didn’t have to mail in, and it’s free money back! They mail a check every quarter – as long as your amount is $10 or more.

AND…for signing up a new account, you get an automatic $5 added…without even placing an order. And if you use my link to sign up, I get $5 and you get $5. Deal? Deal!

Link: Ebates

Anyway, come join the group and I will award a $20 Amazon.com gift certificate to the winner of the bracket and $20 to the WORST of the bracket choosers. Trust me, I have no idea about college basketball – so no presssures. But this way you can tell people you have a bracket and you can be all cool.

Link: Me In Place Group


Sign in with your yahoo id. Group name is: Meinplace and the password is: listing

Deadline to sign up is March 18th.

It’s no fun if nobody joins me and there’s absolutely no pressure to be all college bball knowledgeable!

And a little hobby fondly known as Cross Stitch. Yes, it’s the one craft I can handle. Because you have a pattern and you follow that pattern and ta-da! A picture is born. That I can handle. Drawing, painting, trying to get two sides of a quilt to match up…not so much. But in my perfectionist little mind, cross stitch makes sense.

However, the perfectionist in me also finds herself at the end of a cross stitch project that has taken me almost eight years.To date, the longest cross stitch project in my life. And you thought I had a short attention span. I started it shortly after my middle child was born. She’s claimed it as her own and is excited for me to finish but for some reason…Perfectionist MIP always stalls toward the end of a project. All of a sudden, it’s just…done. And what if there’s something wrong with it? What if it’s not quite right?

So here’s my project. It’s actually not a picture I would have chosen at this point in my life. But, ah well, it’s homey and Middle Child likes animals, so she’s fine with it. It’s about 16″x20″.

I have all the stitching done, just have to do the finishing outline work. Here’s what I mean:

Outlined:

Not outlined (Lamp and spools of thread):

So close and yet so so so far away.

I’m trying to beat the perfectionist and finish. Will let you know the outcome.

Meanwhile, here’s another popular hobby in the house. This one’s Mr Mip’s:

City workers building the snowman

Toy Shop with train and robot in the front window. Can you see that in the top window there’s a light? Lego now has light bricks…very cool.

Carolers – nicknamed “Mommy” and “Daddy”.

Decorating the town Christmas tree!

And her other set from her lovely, adorable, wonderful Grandmother:

1. The lady next to me is humming and singing along with her iPod and I can hear it through my earphones! She’s hunched over. Slowly pushing on that elliptical, singing every fifth word out loud, humming the rest. AAAAAAAHHHHH. I really want to slap her.

2. Ouch.

3. The man next to me is reading the Wall Street Journal on the elliptical. Which is totally irritating because in order to do this, he has to hunch himself over and he’s really not working that hard. So I quit, because I’m annoyed at his level of exertion. (Yes, I understand the irony in this.)

4. I can see SuperBoy smooshing his face on the glass of the big gym where the kids are playing.

5. Fifty-five minutes of working out is almost exactly one hour of working out.

6. Wow. She’s fast. I’m not. I quit.

7. Everybody Loves Raymond is done and now there’s nothing good on the tv.

8. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. (See Ecclesiastes.)

9. Wow. Didn’t know I had that muscle. Ouch.

10. I’m _______. Fill in the blank with: hungry, thirsty, tired, sweaty, cold, lonely, cute enough already (JOKE alert), bored…

1. Buy a plain, kraft paper covered journal (doesn’t matter what size).I have bought them at Barnes & Noble and Archiver’s.

2. Select three coordinating papers from your scrapbook paper stash. (I don’t scrapbook, but I do lurv some good scrapbook paper!)

3. Cut out three pieces of paper from the scrapbook paper…Since we’re talking SAS crafting here, I don’t have measurements, just use your judgment to make a pretty pattern. On the edges of these papers, I’ve taken them and swiped them across a coordinating ink color from an ink pad.

You’ll end up with something like this:

Halftime: Hey Guys! Look! Cords:

Oohh…. So Pretty!

Are you a RockStar?

Yes, you are. Go buy your wife some flowers. Now, that’s RockStar.

4. Okay… back to Crafting. Get some ribbon. I just have a box of ribbon that I’ve collected clearance sale and coupon sale ribbon in. It all should be fairly thin ribbon and fabric-y works best. You’re going to tie and tie and tie and tie those ribbons onto the spiral binding of the journal. Ready?

What you may or may not notice here is that the laundry is right in my view of the TV. Do I stop my crafting? Nope. This was a Sunday afternoon. Football was on. Kids were fine. Moms can relax, too. Give yourself a break.This picture is bad (of the tv), but I wanted you to see what the view was. Look at what a master I am at Ignoring Laundry.

Keep tying on the ribbons all over the spirals. Don’t have them hanging too long, just long enough to fill up the spirals and make them look oh so pretty. Like an Easter Bonnet.

And there you have it. Your very own SAS Craft (Yes, the journal changed. Sorry, that’s how SAS I am.):

Ooh… look! A RockStar!

I showed her my little sample this morning. As a good Knitting Coach should do, she replied: “This is really pretty yarn!” Ah, yes. That’s diplomacy for ya.

Anyway, I hesitantly display my first attempt. (Blushing as badly as I do when the Blockbuster guy yells out our titles: “Okay – that’s LITTLE MERMAID and BOURNE IDENTITY.”)

I don’t know much, but I know this: Random loopy things sticking off the side of the scarf is not a good thing.

So I’m on to Knitting: Take Two. But don’t worry, I’ve found a myriad of uses for my little guy:

This almost works. She just doesn’t like that it doesn’t match her (ugly) cat bed.

So I could use it as an Apple Blanket. It keeps them warm next to the cold air blowing in our windows.

Or it could be a Finger Warmer. If I get nervous, my fingers get fah-reezing, which is not good for piano playing…this could help keep them warm, without the restrictive feel of a glove.

Then I hit upon the answer! A Doorknob Tie! Why a Doorknob Tie?

It’s every germaphobe’s dream! I’ll knit a different color for every member of the family and every doorknob in the house and even one to keep in my purse for when we’re out!

Here is the final schedule and how it looks on my fridge now (My kids put a “Queen of the Kitchen” sticker on the bottom of it, which kinda ruined the “Sports Are Cool & I’m a Cool Mom” image I’m trying to instill into their brains. They put me back in my place, that’s fer shure.)

I have to stop thinking about that or I get claustrophobic and ungrateful.

Moving on. Here is what it looks like:

Here is what the other one looks like. Remarkably similar, huh?

I put the rockin’ river rock deco on the bookshelf under my mother-in-law’s beautiful watercolor of the dunes in Indiana:

If you look closely, you can see the Chicago skyline in the distance (just as you can in real life when you’re at the dunes):

But don’t, whatever you do, pretend you’re IN the painting… at the beach… listening to the waves and reading a book. You’ll get claustrophobic and cranky.

(The glare is my fault, not the watercolor or mother-in-law’s fault. I would never ever insinuate that anything was my mother-in-law’s fault. Nosiree. She’s the best. )