Oobleck! - otherwise known as that cool goop

This is great. Kids love it. But I have to say that adults love it too. The man used to teach elementary school and he introduced this to me before we were married. I got so excited about it. We used to go to parties, and I mean the adult kind of parties where you stay out late, drink too much, raise a ruckus and generally act like children. And I would raid the kitchen wherever we were and make this stuff. Imbibing adults really like it.

And now we know that the bug likes it too.

According to Instructables: Oobleck is a non-newtonian fluid. That is, it acts like a liquid when being poured, but like a solid when a force is acting on it. You can grab it and then it will ooze out of your hands. Make enough Oobleck and you can even walk on it!

Oobleck gets its name from the Dr. Seuss book Bartholomew and the Oobleck where a gooey green substance, Oobleck, fell from the sky and wreaked havoc in the kingdom. Here the Oobleck will be made in a bowl and will likely make a mess, but only because you can get carried away playing with it.

(I just love the internet. I did not know any of this before now.)

It really is a fun experiment and you probably have what you need in your cabinet now. Cornstarch and water. That's it. The ration is between 1:1.5 and 1:2, water to cornstarch. So 1 cup of water and between 1.5-2 cups of cornstarch. They used food coloring which would be very cool. We've only ever done straight white.

Make up a batch and act like a kid. Even if you don't have one.

Break ground - then throw a party.

I realize that I am a great procrastinator. I really need a deadline to get almost anything done. So if there are any major projects that need to happen, they will usually get started oh, maybe a few weeks before Christmas, or a birthday even. Yeah, that will work.

In our old house we didn't really use our backyard as much as we wanted. It was mostly grass so there was no real patio area. Our table and chairs kind of stuck in the grass, there was no shade, that kind of thing. A nice backyard, but not as usable as we would like. So we enlisted the help of my father in law who is an absolutely fabulously talented landscape architect. He came up with some great ideas that I never would have. And since we were doing it ourselves it wasn't that over the top. Just very creative. Good, plan in place.

One Saturday I egged The Man to help me break ground by breaking up a small peice of concrete that needed to come out. Boy was that fun. Sledgehammers flying! And then I promptly proceeded to tell him that now that we started the backyard we needed to get it finished in 6 weeks so we could have his 40th birthday party in our beautiful new backyard. I have to admit that this bit of news did not really go over well with him or with the FIL. But the man knows me well and just kind of went with it, after the initial panic attack. But I was convinced we could get it done. And we did. We kicked butt! And we have awesome friends who would come by to help. Seriously, we told people what we were doing and they came, of their own volition, to help out. So cool.

We were finished almost 3 days before the party, so no sweat there. Seriously, that is a huge time cushion in my world. I am used to finishing things up as people are coming in the door. I think it is genetic. On my mother's side. Turns out that any family wedding (and there are a lot of them) or other big event will find either my mom or one of her sisters (or maybe me) doing up a hem or some such thing on the day of, usually as we are supposed to be going out the door. I wonder if my cousins do the same thing? I would have to think so. That particular gene is pretty strong...

We did end up moving at the end of the year after the backyard redo. A few close friends' first question was "How does the backyard look?" Luckily this house has a fully functional, party ready backyard. Seriously, we lucked out. But now I think I want to make a few changes...

Cousins - a lot of them

We have a lot of cousins. Both of us do. And we have multiple layers of cousins. The Man's are mostly around here. We see both sides all throughout the year. And there are multiple generations hanging out together now that the little ones are all growed up. And here is a good one for you - we also see my father-in-law's cousin's children a lot. Basically we just call them all cousins. So much easier that way. I tried figuring it out one day and got stumped. Then I found this little chart and it helped so much. (BTW - the above referenced is The Man's second cousin.)

A bit of wandering

One of the most fascinating things about the internet for me is the path you sometimes take. So here is mine this evening. Bear with me. (Is that the right bear? or should it be bare? No, I think it is correct. Oh, the many quandaries I face. See, more wandering.)

I check into Facebook every once in a while and try to get caught up. Luckily I don't have that many friends that post so I can go every few days and still feel somewhat current. One of my friends shared a link to a blog where you can get a free 8x8 Shutterfly photo book. This definitely caught my eye. I need to put our France pictures into a photo book and just haven't done it yet. So, I click the link and it tells me to click this link http://www.shutterfly.com/familycircle (must use this one) and you sign into your account, or create a new one, and you get a credit on your account for the hard cover, 20 page, 8x8 photo book. So I did it. Cool.

Then I started to work on the photo book and realized I had 1300+ photos to go through and wouldn't it be great to start with the ones that I posted on my blog. I mean, I had edited to get to those so I knew they were ones that I liked. Well, after some issues with getting into my flickr account I headed here, to my blog, to see what I could see. And then I scrolled through some older posts to get to the France photos and ran across my Diva Action Plan. And I have to say that out of the five items I listed, I have rocked it on 3 and done pretty well on the 4th and kind of ignored the 5th. So, with that, here is my update. (Yep, all that to get here. I told you it was wandering.

1. cooking - doing better. Maybe not cooking all the time but at least have the plan for dinner and food in the house!
2. clean house - yep, got this one. Maybe not exactly spic and span clean, but definitely presentable.
3. backyard - oh yeah, this is where I have kicked some booty. Three raised vegetable planters, a huge list of small projects completed and I AM CONQUERING THE HILL! Oh yes I am. I think I have about 1/3 of it replanted and I have a plan. That was really the hardest part. But I have it. So that is where I have been spending pretty much all of my time. All of it.
4. office - done. new desk in, things rearranged, still working on what works best in this newish space, but I get to say that I am done with this one.
5. - get in shape - not even close. Nope. And you would think with all the gardening and digging and hauling and digging and moving things around and digging I would be seeing some progress. But unfortunately we have had too many yummies in the house. And my theory is that they need to leave the house now - so I eat them all at one time. So that they are no longer in the house. (Yea, I know that doesn't really work. But that is how I roll.) So, this one will need some focus and soon. Beach weather is approaching. Yikes.

Oh, here is a sneak peak of the veggie garden. More to come later on the entire project.

Okay, now where was I? Oh yeah, find pictures from France.

Oh so easily distracted....