Favorites of the week

by Sally

My favorite things this week.

First on my list has to be the public library. At my library, once you have a card, you can go online and reserve anything in the entire library system. They will send it to the local library as soon as it's available, email me that it's waiting, and my local library then holds the item for me for 2 weeks.

Right now at home I have this book on CD:

Haven't listened to it yet and it's due tomorrow. The road to late fees is paved with good intentions.

These DVDs:

And quite a few children's books with CDs so the kids can listen and read along.

On hold and waiting for me at this very moment are a bunch of Christmas CDs, a cookbook, and the newest (it's not that new) Khaled Hosseini book on CD. While there is a limit to how many items you can check out, there is no limit to how many you can place on hold. I have over 40 items on hold at the moment! One of them is a parenting book one of my bossy sisters told me to read. Another is Twilight, the book everyone on the planet has read except for me. Because it is so popular it might take me, say, 2-3 weeks to get it, instead of 5 days which is often the norm for things on my holds list.

When I pick this up later today, I will put it on immediately. I'm not waiting until after Thanksgiving for Christmas music this year.

I used to buy books at Costco. I still have a huge stack of them that I've not yet read. Now I check books out for FREE and don't read them. Much better!

Today I got on a roll and added a bunch of music CDs. Mostly new age stuff--Liz Story, George Winston. Also some John Williams and Yo-Yo Ma, Ella Fitzgerald, and of course The Muppets. I get to audition all of these CDs for a week or two before deciding if I want to buy them on itunes. You can also check out movies, kid's music, any printed media, and some library systems even have amazing online resources like the Rosetta Stone language courses.

Just a small portion of my holds list.

If you don't use your library, give it a try. Most libraries have these online resources now and they are fantastic and will save you money. (Unless you are disorganized like me and you end up paying lots of small late fees...still worth it). You can't beat it for finding books on CDs for road trips (or cleaning the house), cookbooks, parenting books, and a zillion things to entertain and educate children.

Other favorite things this week:

The shark, which my kids think is an awesome toy and therefore they use it constantly. It was about $50 at Coscto. It does not have suction, but the tiny motor does sweep stuff up. I was actually underwhelmed by the performance of this purchase, but in the 3 weeks since, it's gotten used multiple times every day by les enfants, so I have to love that.




Bamboo cooking utensils. From Target. Bamboo is a very durable wood, but gentle on your cookware. You will never go back to plastic or (gasp) metal again.



Man. I spent a long time trying to find the image of these bamboo utensils, then finally gave up and took my own photo. This picture shows that 1. they are Chefmate brand (3 pack at Target includes slotted spoot and reg spoon too) and 2. I have two of the same utensil because I like them so much, I went back 6 months later and got another set.


Cold Weather. We moved recently and I wasn't expecting the warm weather to be humid for the first 5 hours of every single morning! Getting sweaty while dropping kids off for school is not fun. It was too hot for 4 months straight (no one here has A/C). I am so grateful to finally have some cool weather and have the house get cold at night.

This weather looks very appealing when you are too hot for 4 months.

And those, gentle readers, are my favorites of the week.