Keeping the Kids Occupied
With Christmas less than a week away, you may have trouble getting the kids occupied while you quickly wrap a gift or vacuum the floor. I've been working hard on getting a range of activities together to keep the kids
A Ladybug Mistake
This past weekend, my family went to our local Christkindlmarkt. It's as close to a real German one as our city can make it, which means half of it was indoors and really cramped. Vendors sold items as diverse as
Repost: NY Times Article on Being Messy and Creative
Do you work in a messy environment or a clean one? This article from the New York Times suggests that people are more creative in messy environments. I beg to differ. Not because I'm writing a public post about my work
Creative Gardener or Cheap Gardener?
Earlier this year, my husband and I put in two raised garden beds. Our normal garden, on the other side of the shed, was getting less and less sun as the years went on and the trees around it grew
A Little Chassé (or is It Chassis?) Into the Used Car Market
While most of my writing has focussed on the performing arts, I recently took a grand jeté and delved in to the auto industry for two articles. I went from describing a dancer's life to describing automobile parts' lives. Having
Be Friends with Failure | Doodle Alley
While I catch up with life, here's a terrific comic strip about why you should be friends with failure. I'll be back again in full swing next week. Be Friends with Failure | Doodle Alley.
Arts & Culture Magazines for Free
Forgive the one-week lag in my posts. I promise, though, the reason was a good one. I had to buy a new mobile phone (the purchase itself took up most of my spare time) and then test out a new
Tree Angels Out of Coffee Filters
I owned a coffee maker, but because I never drank the stuff, no one trusted me to make it. Ten years later, Keurig (and others) thankfully saved my guests from eternal dessert-drink dulldom. But what to do with those extra
Review: The Artist’s Way for Parents
I would argue that most parents in North America gain most of their parenting skills from "I'm not doing what my parents did" and parenting books. Whether Dr. Spock or Dr. Sears, we all have someone's reference book somewhere telling
I Pulled out My Clarinet: Music to My Ears, Not My Kids’
The other week, my kids pulled out all of their toy instruments and started their own marching band. This particular band didn't let any instrument play for very long: each instrument was required to pick up where the previous one