What I love! | Peaches Prattlings

{December 20, 2013} The birth of a sock monkey

I don’t know if you know that I am a “crafter”: I cross stitch, needlepoint, knit, crochet, stamp, paint, you name it, I’ve probably tried it. I love making things and giving them away and one of these days I’m going to show you some of the cross stitches I have made in the last year.

Right now, I want to talk about the sock monkey I made for my little monkey, Miss A. Her mom calls her monkey and pickle and I found this Christmas Sock Monkey kit, so you know I had to get it and make it. I’ve always wanted to make a sock monkey and here he is. [And I know that her mom is so crazy busy getting ready for Christmas, her parents visiting, that she’s probably not going to see this post – so, no telling! They’ll both get to see it on Christmas!]

This sock monkey’s name is Rudy.

So…you start with two socks that have the red heel trimmed in white, so you can use one for the body and one for the other parts. You take the first sock and cut the bottom to make legs and then sew and stuff the entire thing.

Next, stuff the to the top, sew the legs, stuffing as you go.

Stuffed! We have legs!

Tie off the top to make the head, cut material from the other sock, sew, stuff and add the tail to the body.

We have a head and tail!

Next, from the other sock, we cut out the fabric for the mouth, ears and arms. Now s/he has a smile, makes a difference! I have to tell you, the monkey was a little creepy without eyes, but we’re good now! S/he even has eyelashes! Can you see the antlers???

Arms, ears, mouth, eyes

Rudy needs clothes, we’re getting there!

Red…my favorite color!

We have to decorate the adorable red shirt [no Star Trek references, please!] “I Believe”, do you? Add some holly leaves and red buttons for umpf.

Do you believe?

And Rudy is done! S/he came with an Adoption Decree “To whom it may concern: Be it hereby known, near and far, that the person named below has agreed to be the adopted guardian of a precious wee sock monkey, and to love, cherish, and cuddle this monkey forevermore.” There is a place for her to name her “Beloved Monkey”, “Devoted Guardian” that would be Miss A, “Kindly Maker”, her Auntie G, that’s me! and the “Date of Adoption”. Is that terrific or what?

Hello Rudy!

So…in conclusion here is Rudy with the original kit packaging.

The original packaging and the finished product Think Miss A will love it? I hope so!

{December 20, 2013} Care.com…pet sitting

You wouldn’t entrust the care of your children to just anyone! right?

And since a lot of us just have four legged furry children, why would you take a chance on just anyone to care for them. Under normal circumstances, you would just ask a friend, maybe a co-worker, as long as they don’t have to go too far out of their way, they’re happy to do it. Besides, there’s usually a gift from your travels or some cash for their troubles right, a win-win!

The last time DCM and I both went out of town together, one of his co-workers, who has become a friend, agreed to come over a few times while we were gone and feed the “ki-ki’s” as she called them, empty the litter boxes, give them treats and love on them. Perfect?

Coming up shortly, we are going out of town again and need someone to take care of the kids, turns out, no one is available, oh, what to do? I went to care.com to look for someone to help out. I built a profile listed what I needed and waited for the emails to come in and they did!

There were a lot of good ones and some I was like, huh? I don’t need someone to come in twice a day to feed the cats and change the litter, especially at $10 a visit! The great things about the cats and most cats in general, is that they are pretty self sufficient, put out enough food and water and they are ok.

Any time I go away for four, maybe five days, I leave without worry, but when it’s more, 6-10 days, I need a little more for them, especially jn reference to the litter boxes. Now, I require someone to come in about every three days, mostly because of Peanut’s little “lets pee on the floor” so someone needs to pick and replace the pee pads.

The nice thing about this way is that someone will come in, talk to them, love on them, give them treats, play with them some as well, I even left the laser pointer on the counter!

A lot of people on this site work for pet care places or do this full time, have enough clients that they earn enough to get by, if I was in that situation, I might think about doing something like that!

The woman I selected is very nice, she has a puppy and has been doing this sort of thing for a few years and it seems that she’s very successful at it. I will see what I find when we get home.

One of the things about a service like care.com, not everyone makes it through the vetting process so I feel pretty comfortable right now with AS watching my babies and I liked her profile and email to me, made me feel at ease and the cats seemed to like her as I had to leave her with them for a few minutes while I took a phone call!

Here’s to new experiences!

https://www.care.com

{December 19, 2013} Movie Quote Threads

One of my favorite things to see on Facebook is a movie quote thread.

It starts off with someone posting one line, maybe two, that are famous from a movie and it takes off from there. For example, a very popular one is “As you wish”, which as any diehard fan knows is from The Princess Bride, so the next quote you might see could be “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die” and then the next person would add their quote.

It’s an awesome and fun game, to see if you can think of a line before someone else and make it a good one.

Some others I’ve seen, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Christmas Vacation, Clue, Spinal Tap, but the one that comes up most frequently is Airplane, there is something about that movie that is incredibly memorable to be able to pull up quotes from memory, of course, it’s one people reference in every day life all the time.

What’s a movie you think would get people going? Try it, quote a line on your Facebook status and see how it takes off!

{December 18, 2013} Frankly, The Boss, I am unsettled!

I just realized something today! It’s almost Christmas and I have not heard my all time favorite Christmas song!

And I say this because I never feel like it’s really Christmas until I hear a certain song, sung a certain way by a certain individual with his band.

I have been a Bruce Springsteen fan since I was a kid. I remember being eleven having visions of him in my grandmothers kitchen where she would introduce us and I would get to go on stage with him. No! My grandmother did not know Bruce Springsteen, even though she knew a lot of great and famous people, he was not one of them, but I had big dreams at eleven!

I remember crying the day he married Patty Scialfa, partly because I was head over heals for The Boss, I secretly wanted to be Mrs The Boss…ah childhood dreams, sigh. I have gotten over that, they are so good together and I’m not nearly as musically talented as she is, so I will concede that the better woman won.

Now, back to my point, you’re welcome! There is one song that does it for me at this time of year, Santa Clause is Comin’ to Town, performed by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and until I hear it, it’s not Christmas for me.

It doesn’t matter how many Lifetime or Hallmark Channel holiday movies I watch, even the Charlie Brown Christmas movie with the sad little tree (which I have one, surprise surprise!) until I hear The Boss tell me about Santa comin’ to town and asking if the crowd has been good, I’m just not there.

It probably doesn’t help that I don’t listen to a lot of mainstream radio.

Here is a video of The Boss and the E Street Band performing my song. It doesn’t get started until about 1:20, then you hear the sleigh bells and Clarence Clemens doing the Santa trademark “Ho Ho Ho”. Enjoy!

{December 16, 2013} Moving away…not being there

One of the hardest things about moving away is that you’re not there for people when they need you.

What I mean by that is that when you’ve made friendships with people over the years, they come to rely on you for things and you on them. When you move, that convenience just isn’t there anymore and that’s hard, emotionally.

I have some friend back in Atlanta that I am very close with and we’ve been there for each other in times of joy and times of not so joy. It’s great when you can just pick up the phone and say, “hey, can you do me a favor can you help me out?” My friends know that when they needed me, I would be there, didn’t matter what time, day or night. And i have to tell you that feels good, darn good to be exact. That’s more than just friends, that’s family.

It’s the same for my family, the one I was born in to, it’s tough not being there, well, not being close in proximity to them to be able to be there whenever they might need me. Since I don’t live near them, it takes planning to get there, if they’re going through something, like everyone getting sick one at a time or the entire family or someone needs to go out of town on business and they need an extra hand. The great thing is that my dad lives close enough that he can be there when they need him, I just wish I could do the same.

{December 8, 2013} Lazy day movie marathons

Don’t you just love lazy days? Don’t you just love a good movie marathon?

Today was one of those days, we got up, got some shopping done, I don’t think either of us thought we were actually going to buy out the grocery store, but that’s what it felt like, headed home and it was lunch, lazing on the couch and movies, then dinner and more movies.

For Chanukah, DCM gave me a bunch of movies, you know how much I love movies and the ones he gave me except for one all come with a DVD, Blue Ray and virtual copy, so let’s just say my iPad movie collection runneth over and when I get my 400 disc DVD player here to Colorado, I may very well be out of room!

What did we watch you ask? Well, we started off with one neither of us had seen, Smurfs 2, loved it! I’ll have to do a separate write up. Next was Turbo, cute the second time and DCM hadn’t seen it yet, I do know that I apparently was a little tired because I dozed off somewhere in the middle, but I own it, so I can do that!

Next was Star Trek: Into Darkness, still wow! And I have to tell you, I have Star Trek (2009) which I have watched a lot lately traveling and I still love it and get chills, this one too, Kahn is still a bad arse!

Lastly was Men in Black III, still fun and touching and I had forgotten that Alice Eve was in this movie as Agent O and we had just watched her in Star Trek, both movies modern and having a 60s flair, hmm…

One of the things I love about watching DVDs is that you get the extras, such as behind the scenes, the making of, bloopers, deleted scenes, things that give you a better insight into how things happen, why they happen and how did they do that. I love blooper reels, especially in animated or Muppet movies, there is something even funnier with that.

So, all in all a good day, relaxing and enjoyable. What’s on for tomorrow?

{December 7, 2013} Homefront

This movie was jacked up! There you have it.

This was Jason Statham’s latest action packed movie. The screenplay was written by Sylvester Stallone, adapted from a novel by Chuck Logan. Originally, Stallone was set to play the title role, but he had so many projects going for this year, the part went to Jason Statham not that I’m complaining. As you’re watching, you can see where this could have been a good vehicle for Stallone.

The story is about a former DEA agent living in Louisiana with his young daughter who crosses paths with a local bad dude/meth maker/distributor and as this is a Jason Statham movie, you can guess what happens next. Yup, you guessed it, violence, explosions, gunplay, protecting kids, smoldering looks, sorry, I digressed. (Sorry Statham droolers, he kept his shirt on the entire movie, oh well, can’t have everything!)

There was quite a cast in this movie. James Franco played Gator, the head bad dude in town, he was the meth maker/distributor and he was a really evil guy. Winona Ryder played his druggie on again/off again girlfriend and former “old lady” for a biker gang. Kate Bosworth plays Gator’s oh so charming addict sister. Clancy Brown plays the ‘look the other way’ sherif.

Things were going so well when they moved to this quaint little town, yeah right. Pretty much it all started with the sisters kid picking on Jason Statham’s daughter, she defends herself and the methed out sister wants Gator to do something about it, big mistake, right? Right!

There was good action in the movie, the bad part was that a lot of it took place at night, a lot harder to see the moves and blows, you could hear them though. And I have to say I really liked Izabela Vidovic, who played the daughter, Maddy, she had some moves, a good right hook and thinks on her feet. There were also some wonderfully clever concoctions and wiring, etc, very Statham/Macguyver, as he is apt to do in his movies.

Moral of the story, let people be, don’t mess with them and they won’t have to mess with you and, oh yeah…if Jason Statham has a kid in a movie or is assigned to protect a kid in a movie, then watch out and all I have to say is…don’t these bad guys ever learn?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2312718/?ref_=nv_sr_1

{December 5, 2013} Let’s Talk About Chanukah

We’ve talked about not finding Chanukah things for decorating, we’ve talked about the menorah app on my iPad, what we haven’t talked about is Chanukah.

Chanukah is the Jewish holiday known as “The a Festival Of Lights”. There is a lot of symbolism to the holiday and I would like to share it with you.

The story of Chanukah (some people spell it Hanukkah, you may be one of those and wonder why I spelled it differently, that’s just the way I learned to spell it as a kid and it stuck)

When the temple was destroyed and the Jews went in to rebuild they found enough oil to light the lamps for only one night and the oil lasted eight, that is why we celebrate for eight nights and we call it the “Festival of Light”. So, each night we light one candle progressively so that by the eighth night, we light all eight. We never light the candles directly, we light a shamas which we use to light the other candles after we say the prayer. Sometimes one person will say the blessing, sometimes the entire family and each person will light a candle each night.

There are things that are special to the holiday, such as certain foods; we eat things fried in oil, such as potato latkes or pancakes, there are jam filled donuts which are fried in oil.

We play games as in the dreidel game, you might know the song “Oh Dreidle, Dreidle, Dreidle, I made you out of clay and when you’re dry and ready, oh dreidel I shall play!” A dreidel is a type of top with four sides, each with a letter that indicates what to do in the game. Everyone starts off with some chocolate coins, or gelt, could play with peanuts or other candy, it’s all in good fun and depending on what the dreidel lands on, you put some in, get half, all or none. The letters spell out “Nes Gadol Haya Sham” which means “A great miracle happened here”.

From Wikipedia “The dreidel is believed to commemorate a game devised by the Jews to camouflage the fact that they were studying Torah, which was outlawed by Greeks. The Jews would gather in caves to study, posting a lookout to alert the group to the presence of Greek soldiers. If soldiers were spotted, the Jews would hide their scrolls and spin tops, so the Greeks thought they were gambling, not learning.”

Everything we do is a lesson to be learned and remembered.

I remember growing up and some of my friends being jealous because we got presents for eight nights, this is true, but it wasn’t something extravagant or huge or we got better presents, it was just that our presents were given and received over eight nights, they may have gotten the same amount, just all at once.

In my family we got smaller things and then we got one big present as a family, one year it was a Commodore 64, now I’m totally dating myself! And every year we went to see the Nutcracker Ballet at the City Company at Lincoln Center. My mom made the best potato latkes and my grandmother made the best applesauce.

We celebrated as a family, most times just the four of us, but others we had the opportunity and loved to share the experience with friends and family.

I have an amazing collection of menorahs and one day I will find the photos of all of them or I will just have to take new ones, but I do have to point out that most people don’t have a huge collection of menorahs, I have been lucky that people have been wonderful enough to give them to me as gifts, I bought a few, but the majority of my collection has come from friend and family.

I want to tell you that the most special menorah to me is the one that a dear friend of the family made. There is a black and white photo of it at my dad’s house, that my mom took that says it all for me. This is the menorah that my dad lights every year and I have attached a photo.

Thank you for letting me share this wonderful celebration with you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah

{December 2, 2013} Some days I really love my iPad!

As you know, Chanukah started last week and we celebrated in Atlanta, that you may not have known.

I don’t know if I’ve told you about my menorah collection, maybe I will tomorrow, but tonight, I want to talk about my iPad, sort of. So, the bulk of my collection is in the storage unit and we didn’t go to get one before we left and I didn’t bring any home with us.

We got in after sundown and most of the stores are closed by six on Sundays, I can usually find something at Bed, Bath and Beyond, so I did what any smart, techno-savvy girl would do in this situation, I went to the App Store on my iPad and searched for a menorah!

And boy did I find a lot! There are different types, shapes, colors, backgrounds, options like prayers, songs, games and the one I downloaded even had a regular burn or fast burn! You even had to move the shamash (full explanation tomorrow!) to light the other candles!

So…tonight being the fifth night, I share with you the miracle of lights (and Apple!).

{November 30, 2013} Our Pets…oh how we love and name them!

We love our pets, they are our family, our children or furry children as we like to call them.

It’s always interesting to hear what people name their pets and why. Some people give their pets “human or people” names and some give them made up word names, some named after sports teams, some named for a favorite food. SDL has two cats, Boogie and Jack, CKM has a sweet puppy named Sasha, BJS has one cat named Oscar and another called Queenie. DCM had a dog named Lykin [sp?], SR has a furry child named Spencer. LK had a precious black lab named Jazz, think she was a dancer? Now, they have Divit, Twinkie and [jiminy crickets i can’t remember, I’m sorry!] LD has a white fluffy cat named Bella and KS has a ragdoll named Molly, love that name!

If I listed everyone and their pets, we’d be here all day! I’ve had some doozies, as a kid growing up, we had cats, cats and more cats, only had boy cats and when I was on my own, all girls, or so I thought! We had Rocky Raccoon, he had a mask around his eyes and rings on his tail, then there was Rocky II or…Rocky Baby Bubie, as I affectionately called him, next came Rocky III, do you sense a theme? He was GES’ personal baby and plaything. When I was in high school, Newgat [New Cat, sort of] joined the family, he was part Maine Coon and grew and grew and grew!

Then, when I had my own place, I inherited Gabby (that was the name she had), from a friend, she was a black cat, looked like a persian and she was my baby. I thought she needed a friend, so I got Jymy, boy was I wrong! When Gabby was gone, I got a set of sisters, I wanted to name them something clever and Peanut and Butter stuck! Along the way there was Biscuit, who I thought was a sweet little girl, then after I gave her away..something came up that made us realize we were wrong!

I’ve had a bunny named Money Penny, love James Bond I do! I also had a few rats as pets, yes, pets I said! There was Gwendolyn, I was working for the renaissance festival, so I was all ‘renaissancey’ and then there was Priscilla, I was a huge fan of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, she had a sandy hood and tail. Then I had Ginny, she was sweet.

Isn’t it crazy what we name our “kids”? They all mean something to us, even though others may not be able to figure it out.

Want to share yours?

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