CRAFTING
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondō
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Release Date: October 14, 2014
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles?
Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you’ll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo’s clients have lapsed (and she still has a three-month waiting list).
With detailed guidance for determining which items in your house “spark joy” (and which don’t), this international bestseller featuring Tokyo’s newest lifestyle phenomenon will help you clear your clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home—and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.
This book created quite a buzz when it first came out in 2014 and Marie Kondo recently came out with a popular Netflix series based on the book. I actually read this book last year (I’m so behind on reviews!) before I knew there was going to be a Netflix series. I haven’t watched it so I can’t say how much of the book is in it.
I think most people can use some help tidying up. I know I can! As with any self-help book, I found there were pieces of advice and information I could use and some I either couldn’t or didn’t want to use. I like the method she uses of grouping items before going through them and deciding what to keep. That was actually a large part of the book.
I did not like the part where she said to get rid of all your books. According to her, you’ll never re-read the books you’ve already read and you’ll never get around to reading the books in your TBR pile. Lies! Lies, I tell you! She also talks to inanimate objects, thanking her purse for its service, etc. That’s a little weird for me.
The author lives and works in Japan (the book is actually translated from Japanese) so most of her techniques are geared toward people who live in Japan. Most dwellings in her examples are very small. Some of them are even just an adult child’s room in their parents’ house. She doesn’t use any examples of people who have small children or teenagers – the untidiest people of them all!
Even though I’m not going to follow her method to the tee, I found The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up inspiring and helpful.
Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release Date: April 17th, 2018
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
A heartbreaking and powerful story about a black boy killed by a police officer, drawing connections through history, from award-winning author Jewell Parker Rhodes.
Only the living can make the world better. Live and make it better.
Twelve-year-old Jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat. As a ghost, he observes the devastation that’s been unleashed on his family and community in the wake of what they see as an unjust and brutal killing.
Soon Jerome meets another ghost: Emmett Till, a boy from a very different time but similar circumstances. Emmett helps Jerome process what has happened, on a journey towards recognizing how historical racism may have led to the events that ended his life. Jerome also meets Sarah, the daughter of the police officer, who grapples with her father’s actions.
Once again Jewell Parker Rhodes deftly weaves historical and socio-political layers into a gripping and poignant story about how children and families face the complexities of today’s world, and how one boy grows to understand American blackness in the aftermath of his own death.
Jerome is a black boy who is only twelve years old when is shot and killed at the playground by a police officer who supposedly thought the toy gun he was playing with was real. After he dies, his spirit remains close to home. He can watch his grieving family but they can’t see him. The only person who can see him is Sarah, the daughter of the police officer who shot him. She is struggling with the dichotomy of loving her father but hating what he’s done. The realization that he’s racist (whether he knows it or not) is hard on her. She looks to Jerome to help her deal with her feelings but he cannot absolve her guilt about what her father has done.
After a while, the spirit of Emmett Till, the real life black boy who was lynched in 1955 at fourteen years old, comes to visit Jerome. It’s then that one realizes that not much has changed in sixty years. Black people are still viewed with fear and suspicion.
Ghost Boys is extremely timely, as unarmed black men and boys are being repeatedly killed by police officers with little to no consequences for the officers involved. It’s a heartbreaking story, especially for a middle-grade book. I think parents should read it with their children because it will likely bring up emotions that a child will have trouble working through on their own.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)
I realized that while West got his own birthday post, I neglected to write posts for Cash and Neve’s birthdays. It’s so hectic with all three kids having birthdays within a month of each other. I’m going to post Cash’s birthday post today and Neve’s tomorrow.
My sweet first-born Cash turned nine in July. He’s so tall – he comes up to my chin now! He’s still super skinny at about 55 pounds.
His latest obsession is Minecraft so he had a Minecraft themed birthday party. Before the party, he opened his presents from Travis and I. He’d been asking for a keytar for months and he finally got one!
Since the Minecraft craze is relatively new, there aren’t many Minecraft birthday supplies on the market yet and I was forced to get creative. Travis, Granddad and the boys painted several cardboard boxes to look like Minecraft world items. The plan was that the kids would build things with them, but intstead they just destroyed them.
We also played Pin the Tail on the Ender Dragon. We found Ender Dragon images online and printed them out to make the game.
For the food I just made as much as I could square since everything is square in the Minecraft world. We had square cheeseburger sliders and square blue Knox blox to look like Minecraft water. I made a Creeper cake that is a composite of ideas I found on Pinterest.
For goodie bags I ordered some boxes that look like gold bars (there is gold in Minecraft) and put in a Dum-Dum sucker (the stick had to be cut down a little to make it fit) and some fake diamonds that are meant to be used as table decorations for weddings. There are diamonds in Minecraft so they fit the theme. Then I pinned a Minecraft pin on the outside of the box since it wouldn’t fit inside of it. I used the extra diamonds as table decorations. For the table cloths, I used plastic table cloths that look like grass. I ordered everything except the suckers off Amazon.
If you are more crafty and motivated than I am, you can find tons of elaborate Minecraft party ideas on Pinterest. Luckily, Cash was thrilled was his mid-range Minecraft party. A good time was had by all!
West turned seven last week. He’ll be starting 2nd grade in the fall. I know I say this every year, but I can’t believe how fast time with my kids is flying by. This year West had a Cars 2 themed birthday party at an insane kids play place called Power Play. They have everything a kid could want to do all in one building: laser-tag, bowling, go carts, video games, skee-ball, and I don’t even know what else. West wanted to have purple hair for his special day but my hair dresser was fresh out of purple dye. He settled for red:
We gave West the Kindle Fire he asked for and while he mostly plays games on it, he does read books on it too. Although he reads above grade level, he still prefers to be read to and says he doesn’t like reading in his brain. I’m glad that the Kindle has made him a little more interested in books. I’m hoping that as he gets older, he learns to enjoy reading in his brain.
Cash and Little Miss’s birthdays are only one day apart. Luckily, Cash actually wanted to have a joint party with Little Miss. We had a Dora vs Star Wars party.
I made Cash’s cake using the Wilton Darth Vader pan. Beware of the black icing – everyone who ate this cake had purple teeth and lips!
I made Little Miss’s cake using the 2010 Wilton Dora pan. I don’t know if it’s discontinued or what but it was out of stock everywhere, even on Wilton’s website. Fortunately, I found a pan on eBay for a good price.
West had a farm themed birthday party this year. I made this cake using the Wilton Tractor cake pan:
This Easter we also celebrated my birthday and my mother-in-laws birthday because they were both within a few days of Easter. My mom brought my favorite birthday cake – strawberry. Cash claims not to like strawberry cake (impossible!) so I wanted to make a fun Easter dessert that he would like. I found the idea for these carrot garden beds in the April 2011 Family Fun magazine. They were quick and easy to put together and everyone at Easter dinner thought they were cute.
I made these ornament cupcakes for West's preschool Christmas party. I found the idea on the Wilton website.
West leaves the paper on and eats the cupcake out of it. You might think that would be less messy but it's actually not.
This layout is the boys on the rides at the Douglas County Fair, the fair that we went to for the tractor pull. Cash's serious motorcycle face cracks me up.
I used a sketch on this one too.
