Raw should mean raw!

I can't believe this! The US is going to pass a law that allows pasteurised almonds to be labelled as raw.

Not only will it be very difficult to buy raw almonds, which is going to be a big problem for raw foodists, but it will be acceptable for the nuts to be mislabeled as raw.

There is a petition online - here is the link... http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/mandatory-almond-pasteurization-is-wrong.html

This is totally unacceptable - here is a news article which explains the issue very well. Almonds which have been heated will no longer be living food and will no longer have the life-giving enzymes intact.

Please consider signing the petition!

Traditions.

I love traditions. They are something that I don't really give much thought to most of the time, as they are just a part of my life. It is only when I am talking to other people who don't have the same traditions that I really realize how important they are to me. I am grateful to my parents for taking the time to give me these traditions. As a parent I now realize that it was a bit of work for them to keep these up and make them a priority. I am pleased to carry on many of them with my boys and also to add new ones to our lives as well.



Here is one of my favorite tradtions.




And this one is pretty good too!!

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Hey, how come we don't have a label for chocolate?? That must be an oversight on our part.

**O.K. - I've fixed it, we now have a chocolate label...it really is a must-have!

Who do we believe?

I have watched Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and found it very believable. But tonight I was watching another video, The Global Warming Swindle, on Google Video. This documentary, which was made for British TV, was also very believable.

Al Gore showed us a graph that seemed to indicate that carbon dioxide levels and the earth's temperature went up and down together, leading us to believe that the increased CO2 was causing the higher temperatures. However, in The Global Warming Swindle, we are told that the temperatures went up first, THEN the CO2 increased a few hundred years later.

Apparently, the greatest cause of global warming is....the sun. Sounds obvious, doesn't it? Increased solar activity has historically resulted in a warmer earth. Our oceans are the main producers of carbon dioxide but, because of the size of the oceans, changes are very slow. The video stated that it cannot be human activities of the last 60 years that are causing current global warming and weather changes, because the cause of these effects probably occurred hundreds of years ago.

It really makes me wonder what to believe, and I feel that once again we are all being manipulated by the people who are funding one side or another. Obviously, there's an agenda here, and I think we have to follow our own intuition as to what is right for us.

Oh my!!! That has got to hurt!

("Hee, hee, hee , hee"- she laughed hysterically.)

It really takes very little to amuse me.

I feel pretty, oh, so pretty...

So...this is me, in case you were wondering what I looked like. ;-) Aren't I pretty? I feel pretty, oh, so pretty...



E -(coming to show me his drawing) "I drew a picture of you. I figure it is you in the morning....you have your felted slippers on"
Me - "Mmmm, yes...I see" (feeling somewhat dismayed by my pig-like nose in the drawing, the messy hair not even registering as it is pretty much an accurate morning description...O.K, it always looks like that - hair is not a priority in our house)
E - "You have your arms out ready to give me my hug"
Me - "Ooh, you're right, I do...I see that now" (thinking aawww, you are forgiven for the pig-like nose...maybe pig-like nose is rather beautiful to youngest son who wants only to hug me every morning to start our day off nicely)
E - "...and you have big lips...cuz you are about to kiss me"
Me -"Ha ha...I will kiss you now too, you monkey" (Aaawww, does this kid know how to work it or what?)

Hand-made with love

I am happy to share photos of the baby gifts I recently made for my dear friend J's soon-be-born twins. The above photo is the "gift" bag I delivered my gifts in. Since J is an Amy Butler fan, I chose the paisley print fabric from Amy's Belle line to make this tote for J. The tote has a zippered top and a round bottom along with a pocket for her cell phone on the inside (see top of photo shown below for a glimpse of the inside of the lined tote). Rather than wrapping the gift or using a paper gift bag, I tucked the completly hand-made matching outfits for J's daughter and son into the tote.


Above is the polar fleece top and matching rolled cuff denim pants for baby B along with felted Mary-Jane's and my favourite - teeny tiny hand knitted socks! I added a print fabric pocket to the top and two matching pockets to the back of the pants which have all been embroidered along their top edges just for fun.
Here is baby T's outfit. His pants are corduroy instead of the stretch denim and he has knitted booties instead of Mary-Janes to keep his toes cozy. Can I tell you how delighted I was to find sock yarn with the colourway found in the Amy Butler cotton print used for all the pockets? I love self-striping yarn!

Here are the baby socks I gave to J (along with an extra pair I knit from some red self-striping yarn I had on hand...) placed next to the pair of adult sized socks I knit for myself - just to give you a scale of comparison. Funny thing is that I cast on 32sts. for the baby socks and 64sts for the adult version. Hard to believe that half the stitches yields a sock so delightfully teeny!
It was so much fun making this gift for J and looking forward to her using these in the coming months. Best of all, is that we shall soon be meeting these much anticipated babes in person!

The best classroom in the world

A tree! Yes, this is today's "classroom" - the maple tree in our front yard. When I took these photos, I was thinking of Heather's last post and her picture of her boys on a rug in the sunshine. Here are K and S doing their thing - K found a very comfortable branch on which to relax and read to his brother!