Dear Lilly,
I want you to do something magic for me. This is what it is. I have wanted you to do this for a long time. I want you to put a spell on me so I can be magic. And make myself have wings like you and stuff like that. You would be mybest friend even though your nice allredy.
I would love you.
Pretty Please.
Love,
Anna
look on the back of this page
This box is a present for you and your family.
Please
Please
Please
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Going To Bed
(yes, another one of these.....but this truly happens in my house everynight!)
* WHY I LOVE MUM *
Mum and Dad were watching TV when Mum said, 'I'm tired, and it's getting late. I think I'll go to bed'
She went to the kitchen to make sandwiches for the next day's lunches. Rinsed out the popcorn bowls, took meat out of the freezer for dinner the following evening, checked the cereal box leve ls, filled the sugar container and put spoons and bowls on the table.
She then put some wet clothes in the dryer, put a load of clothes into the washer, ironed a shirt and secured a loose button.
She picked up the game pieces left on the table, put the phone back on the charger and put the telephone book into the drawer.
She watered the plants, emptied a rubbish bin and hung up a towel to dry.
She yawned and stretched and headed for the bedroom. She stopped by the desk and wrote a note to the teacher, counted out some cash for an excursion, and pulled a text book out from hiding under the chair.
She signed a birthday card for a friend, addressed and stamped the envelope and wrote a quick note for the grocery store. She put both near her purse.
Mum then washed her face with 3 in 1 cleanser, put on her Night solution & age fighting moisturiser, brushed and flossed her teeth and filed her nails.
Dad called out, 'I thought you were going to bed.'
'I'm on my way,' she said.
She put some water into the dog's dish and put the cat outside, then made sure the doors were locked.
She looked in on each of the kids and turned out their bedside lamps and TV's, hung up a shirt, threw some dirty socks into the basket, and had a brief conversation with the one up still doing homework.
In her own room, she set the alarm; laid out clothing for the next day, straightened up the shoe rack. She added three things to her 6 most important things to do list. She said her prayers, and visualised the accomplishment of her goals.
About that time, Dad turned off the TV and announced to no one in particular.
'I'm going to bed.'
And he did...without another thought.
Anything extraordinary here? Wonder why women live longer...?
CAUSE WE ARE MADE FOR THE LONG HAUL..... (and we can't die sooner, we still have things to do!!!!)
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Lilly - Anna's Forest Fairy
About 3 years ago - wait, even longer - when Anna was in kindergarten (yes, 2004) she started writing notes, leaving them on her nightside table to any fairy that might be out there to respond.
Well, what do you know? A fairy came, read her notes and then left Anna notes in the tiniest handwriting you have ever, ever seen. (note to self: take a couple pictures of the notes and upload). You can hardly read them the print is so tiny!
Anyway over the years we have learned a lot about Lily - she has a sister who had a baby about 2 years ago, her father is a pretty good carpenter, she lives up on the hill above us somewhere, her birthday is on April 1st and she always remembers to write on Anna's birthday and Christmas.
In fact, almost every time Lily does come, she always has some tiny, itty, bitty something to leave behind for Anna. Some of the items include:
mini wheelbarrow
mini flower pot with plastic flowers
mini clay pot
mini friendship book
mini toys
mini fairy tale books
beautiful mini stone heart
(again, I'll take a couple pictures of some of the cool things that she has brought).
Hmmmm....today's Feb 13th and I think I can pretty much confirm that Lily isn't coming tonight - she doesn't have anything for Valentine's Day....
And, funny how Lily doesn't come when I am not at home.
I wonder why?
Well, what do you know? A fairy came, read her notes and then left Anna notes in the tiniest handwriting you have ever, ever seen. (note to self: take a couple pictures of the notes and upload). You can hardly read them the print is so tiny!
Anyway over the years we have learned a lot about Lily - she has a sister who had a baby about 2 years ago, her father is a pretty good carpenter, she lives up on the hill above us somewhere, her birthday is on April 1st and she always remembers to write on Anna's birthday and Christmas.
In fact, almost every time Lily does come, she always has some tiny, itty, bitty something to leave behind for Anna. Some of the items include:
mini wheelbarrow
mini flower pot with plastic flowers
mini clay pot
mini friendship book
mini toys
mini fairy tale books
beautiful mini stone heart
(again, I'll take a couple pictures of some of the cool things that she has brought).
Hmmmm....today's Feb 13th and I think I can pretty much confirm that Lily isn't coming tonight - she doesn't have anything for Valentine's Day....
And, funny how Lily doesn't come when I am not at home.
I wonder why?
Anna'a been Scouted
Oops! Forgot to report that Anna has been scouted. So let's see....we went in on a Wednesday afternoon, Monday was Martin Luther King Day and first thing Tuesday morning I got the call.
They wanted to sign her up!
Here are a couple of the ones I sent:
They wanted to sign her up!
So I went on in - signed some docs, and mailed a disc of some pictures of Anna.
Here are a couple of the ones I sent:
The Racer A.S. by A.S.
This was written by A.S. in the spring of 2007 for school and I just found a copy of it while cleaning out my inbox - deleted the email but had to save the story:
I was born on April 13th, 1999 in Switzerland. I lived there for 3 ½ years. I have blond hair. I always wear Uggs. Often, I don’t were socks. Do you think I can do a split? Because I can! My favorite color is pink. I always wear bright colors.
My zodiac sign is Aries .The meaning of my name is gracious. The members of my family are Jack, Scott, Louisa and Mark. I live on RTL. My favorite kind of food is strawberries. My favorite movie is Scooby-Doo and The Werewolf. Shaggy turns into a werewolf.
I love going on trips. When I was little I had a dolphin that was named Orca Whale and my nookie. I went to the Swiss Alps in Switzerland. I also went on the train that takes you up to the mountains. My favorite games are tunnel tag and freeze tag.
I have lots of memories from school. I had a field trip to Shelburne Museum in 2nd grade. My kindergarten teacher was Mrs. Scatchard. I had Mrs. Johnson for 1st and second grade. I have lots and lots of stories that I wrote at school. My teacher called me Anna Banana!
In my future I will live in Switzerland. When I’m 15 I will babysit. When I am 20 I want to be in the Olympics. I know I will like it because I can be on TV. The hard part is it’s hard to do all the sports.
I was born on April 13th, 1999 in Switzerland. I lived there for 3 ½ years. I have blond hair. I always wear Uggs. Often, I don’t were socks. Do you think I can do a split? Because I can! My favorite color is pink. I always wear bright colors.
My zodiac sign is Aries .The meaning of my name is gracious. The members of my family are Jack, Scott, Louisa and Mark. I live on RTL. My favorite kind of food is strawberries. My favorite movie is Scooby-Doo and The Werewolf. Shaggy turns into a werewolf.
I love going on trips. When I was little I had a dolphin that was named Orca Whale and my nookie. I went to the Swiss Alps in Switzerland. I also went on the train that takes you up to the mountains. My favorite games are tunnel tag and freeze tag.
I have lots of memories from school. I had a field trip to Shelburne Museum in 2nd grade. My kindergarten teacher was Mrs. Scatchard. I had Mrs. Johnson for 1st and second grade. I have lots and lots of stories that I wrote at school. My teacher called me Anna Banana!
In my future I will live in Switzerland. When I’m 15 I will babysit. When I am 20 I want to be in the Olympics. I know I will like it because I can be on TV. The hard part is it’s hard to do all the sports.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
DID YOU KNOW?
Peel a banana from the bottom and you won't have to pick the little 'stringy things' off of it. That's how the primates do it.
Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.
Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!
Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating.
Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.
Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.
To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.
For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.
Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic.
Leftover snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simple chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla icecream.
OTHER GOOD THINGS TO KNOW:
1. Reheat Pizza
Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micropizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.
2. Easy Deviled Eggs
Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.
3. Expanding Frosting
When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar andcalories per serving.
4. Reheating refrigerated bread
To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place themin a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.
5. Newspaper weeds away
Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers put layers around the plants overlapping as you go cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.
6. Broken Glass
Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can't see easily.
7. No More Mosquitoes
Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.
8. Squirrel Away!
To keep squirrels from eating your plants sprinkle your plants withcayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and thesquirrels won't come near it.
9. Flexible vacuum
To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.
10. Reducing Static Cling
Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and -- ta da! -- static is gone.
11. Measuring Cups
Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes rightout.
12. Foggy Windshield?
Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalk board eraser and keep it in the glovebox of your car. When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!
13 Reopening envelope
If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside , just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Voila! It unseals easily.
14. Conditioner
Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's a lot cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It's also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn't like when you tried it in your hair...
15. Goodbye Fruit Flies
To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass fill it 1/2' with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid, mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!
16. Get Rid of Ants
Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it 'home,' can't digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works & you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!
17. INFO ABOUT CLOTHES DRYERS
The heating unit went out on my dryer! The gentleman that fixes things around the house for us told us that he wanted to show us something and he went over to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. (I always clean the lint from the filter after every load clothes.) He took the filter over to the sink, ran hot water over it. The lint filter is made of a mesh material - I'm sure you know what your dryer's lint filter looks like. Well,...the hot water just sat on top of the mesh! It didn'tgo through it at all! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh and that's what burns out the heating unit. You can't SEE the film, but it's there. It's what is in the dryer sheets to make your clothes soft and static free -- that nice fragrance too, you know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box, well this stuff builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen. This is also what causes dryer units to catch fire & potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (& to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out & wash it with hot soapy water and an old tooth brush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long! How about that!?! Learn something new everyday! I certainly didn't know dryer sheets would do that. So, I thought I'd share!
Note: I went to my dryer and tested my screen by running water on it. The water ran through a little bit but mostly collected all the water in the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water & a nylon brush and I had it done in 30 seconds.Then when I rinsed it the water ran right through the screen! There wasn't any puddling at all! That repairman knew what he was talking about!
Peel a banana from the bottom and you won't have to pick the little 'stringy things' off of it. That's how the primates do it.
Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.
Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!
Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating.
Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.
Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.
To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.
For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.
Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic.
Leftover snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simple chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla icecream.
OTHER GOOD THINGS TO KNOW:
1. Reheat Pizza
Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micropizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.
2. Easy Deviled Eggs
Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.
3. Expanding Frosting
When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar andcalories per serving.
4. Reheating refrigerated bread
To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place themin a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.
5. Newspaper weeds away
Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers put layers around the plants overlapping as you go cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.
6. Broken Glass
Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can't see easily.
7. No More Mosquitoes
Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.
8. Squirrel Away!
To keep squirrels from eating your plants sprinkle your plants withcayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and thesquirrels won't come near it.
9. Flexible vacuum
To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.
10. Reducing Static Cling
Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and -- ta da! -- static is gone.
11. Measuring Cups
Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes rightout.
12. Foggy Windshield?
Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalk board eraser and keep it in the glovebox of your car. When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!
13 Reopening envelope
If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside , just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Voila! It unseals easily.
14. Conditioner
Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's a lot cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It's also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn't like when you tried it in your hair...
15. Goodbye Fruit Flies
To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass fill it 1/2' with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid, mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!
16. Get Rid of Ants
Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it 'home,' can't digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works & you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!
17. INFO ABOUT CLOTHES DRYERS
The heating unit went out on my dryer! The gentleman that fixes things around the house for us told us that he wanted to show us something and he went over to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. (I always clean the lint from the filter after every load clothes.) He took the filter over to the sink, ran hot water over it. The lint filter is made of a mesh material - I'm sure you know what your dryer's lint filter looks like. Well,...the hot water just sat on top of the mesh! It didn'tgo through it at all! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh and that's what burns out the heating unit. You can't SEE the film, but it's there. It's what is in the dryer sheets to make your clothes soft and static free -- that nice fragrance too, you know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box, well this stuff builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen. This is also what causes dryer units to catch fire & potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (& to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out & wash it with hot soapy water and an old tooth brush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long! How about that!?! Learn something new everyday! I certainly didn't know dryer sheets would do that. So, I thought I'd share!
Note: I went to my dryer and tested my screen by running water on it. The water ran through a little bit but mostly collected all the water in the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water & a nylon brush and I had it done in 30 seconds.Then when I rinsed it the water ran right through the screen! There wasn't any puddling at all! That repairman knew what he was talking about!
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