Just like my growing collection of old books, I also love journals. I am a journal junkie. I used to try to keep separate ones…work, craft, garden, personal, etc, plus a calendar. No more.

For the past few years I have just done it all in one. My ideal is about 4×7 with over 100 lined pages. I paste in some library card pockets, a calendar and a few sudoku and we are good to go. I go through about 5 a year.

I know, way too much info. The pic above is from a website called ex libris anonymous. Perfecto! They turn old book covers into journals. I had seen these a while back and just re-found the site.

I am really thinking I need to get myself a birthday gift…after all I turn 35 on Thursday.

I spotted this book over on the Something’s Hiding in Here Blog. This is sooo Japanese.

From the Check and Stripes book

When my sister and I visited my brother last summer in Tokyo we definitely noticed we were overly colorful…everyone there in western style clothes was so muted. Navy, cream, lots of linen. The most fascinating thing was that a lot of the teenagers dressed in the traditional yukata when they went out to party. I have a few my grandmother bought when they lived over there…eventually I need to pull them out and do somehting with them.

I bought several Japanese sewing books while there. They are all incredible. The bookstores had huge selections. All of them are about the same size, and range from traditional to western. All for under $15 dollars US!

My favorite thing was that so many of the upscale department stored had sections that specialized in trims: lace and vintage buttons.

This is a total substitute today. I had planned on sewing all day, but Little-Sis was up all night with a stomach bug, which means I was up all night too. I have learned not to cut up things while sleepy.

As I have mentioned I have been trying to find different ways to do math with the girls. The sort of do math at school, but big-sis is pretty quick and sneeky, so she has figured out that she can do everything with her fingers and doesn’t need to memorize anything.

So today as I was downloading Killer Soduku puzzles from the Times Online about Tetsuya Miyamoto. He has developed a new way of motivating kids in math through puzzles (Times Article). Here’s is his official website. You have to love Japan.

I have a thing for old books. The picture above is from Grandfather Stories. It has a great version of the Bremen Town Musicians. When I was little we lived about 35 miles north of Bremen for two years in a town called Osterholz-Scharmbeck…fascinating I know, but it was very cool living so close to a real fairy tale.

My latest favorite are the Harper’s readers from the late 1800’s.

This is from the third reader. The illustrations are amazing, and it is interspersed with science, history, poems, and stories.

Here’s a list of some of the books available in Google Books.  I could spend days on these!

Not the most exciting thing ever-but we are practicing addition. This is a worksheet math puzzle. You do the problems and then fill in the blanks to get an Egyptian joke.

Anything to try to make 9 + 5 more interesting….

The witch Hazel in the front yard. This was a Mother’s Day girft the year after we moved in, so 2004.

We got started on the garden about 3 weeks ago. In addition to these we planted peas and beets. We are far enough south that we have about a month until the lettuce spinach and such bolt, but they make good baby-veggies salads.

The bucket on March 15th:

Here’s the bucket today:

And the peas:

The blue bucket is the girl’s old toy bucket…it took some maneuvering, but we finally sod them on the idea of “recycling” it.