Firesong's Profile

My in-laws got that phone for my son when he was about two. I donated it soon after, also saying that nobody uses a rotary phone anymore. Then we moved in with my parents for a year, they hauled out their boxes of thirty year old toys, and he started playing with the Fisher-Price phone that was once my brother's and mine. It's mostly the pull toy appeal, I think, how it makes noise and rolls its eyes; but he has also pretended to call people on it.

The wooden railway set is a favorite that's not a hand-me-down. Target has some cheap pieces -- $3 a pop for train cars and locomotives. Ikea has a figure-8 rail set for $10, I think, but we have no Ikea in our city.

@Splitty: I always color-coded my three ring binders to my school subjects, to the degree that those dull color options would let me. Blue or grey for math, green or grey or black for science, red for Spanish, beige ("putty") for history, pink or beige for English. Kind of neat to see that other people make the same associations.

@51desks: Warm green is pear green. Warm blue is turquoise.

It looks like a big eye. Is that intentional?

It does look dramatically more beautiful after, but one thing puzzles me: the dresser looks curved in the after pic, with a front that bows out, but it looks flat in the before pic. Is the front curved or flat?

Thanks, rarcke. I was about to suggest lip balm tubes, as my family goes through Chap Stick a lot quicker than we go through glue sticks.

I'm confused. Why would a toddler need more than one pair of play shoes and maybe one pair of dress shoes? What I'm puzzling over is what to do with the outgrown pairs.

I wouldn't like stooping to access a microwave at waist level or below, but climbing to get to a microwave over the refrigerator would be even worse. I'd have to drag out a step ladder every time. Those drawer microwaves look like they might be easier to clean than the usual model. As for getting the microwave off the counter top, my parents still use the microwave cart they got back in the 1980s.

Crocheters looking for a ripple pattern, here's one from Attic24, a blog I love:
http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/neat-ripple-pattern.html

Note that 1) it's British, so what Americans call a double crochet, she calls a triple; and 2) she deliberately chooses soft curves rather than pointy corners. But she has wonderful photo illustrations on how to make what she made!

IMO most of these items looked better before the spray paint, especially the mottled owl and the rabbit candlestick.

How does one clean these things?