Christmas tree is up!

Picking a tree, originally uploaded by michaeldog_1999.

On Saturday we went to Home Depot to choose a Christmas tree. Here are Zach and Noah posing before the HUGE selection of them before getting down to the hard work of actually choosing just one tree and agreeing which one!

Points site recommendation

As I was redeeming "points" for a gift card today I thought I would tell you all about it. I belong to a site called mypoints.com. It is free to join and by doing various things on the site you earn "points" which you can redeem for gift cards to various places. I have so far this year redeemed 4 or 5 gift cards ($50 worth), so it is legit and the cards do actually come in the mail reliably. :-) Some of the things you do to earn points are as simple as clicking on a link in emails. You do NOT have to sign up at the click-through site for this, that or the other. I hate those on other sites where you have to sign up for whatever it is. With Mypoints you get the points (usually 5 points) for just clicking through to visit the site presented in the email. I would still recommend you use a spam email account of course, but honestly I haven't seen much of an increase in spam just from joining mypoints or doing the click throughs. You also earn various amounts of points per dollar spent at online retailers when you go through the Mypoints site links. In that instance it works like Ebates, Upromise or a dozen or more other sites that do the same thing. In any case, you have minimal extra time (about 10 minutes per day is about what I spend), check it out - http://www.mypoints.com/. They do indeed have a referral program, so if you are so inclined I would love to "refer" you and get points for doing so. You need to send me your email address and I'll send you a referral. You can contact me at tanya.fletcher [at] gmail.com, which is my spam account basically. Even if you don't want to do that, I encourage you to sign up anyway and start earning free gift cards. :-)

The old/homeschool blog

For anyone interested, my old blog, which may become exclusively our homeschool blog, is here:

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/tmlf

Fatal flaw with Homeschoolblogger - or maybe just with me

Ok, I admit it: I really really stink at easily and conveniently linking photos into my blog. I actually had to email myself detailed instructions, which I then reread every single time I need to link a photo to my blog if I use anything but photobucket. I don't really like using photobucket as much as I like to use Flickr, so that is a big problem.

Then, today, I discovered something amazing - the "blog this" button on my Flickr photo. Huh? I clicked it (of course!) to see what that did. I can link my blog directly to Flickr and make my life a whole lot easier?! But wait, only a selection of blog sites are supported by it, blogger being one and homeschoolblogger not being one. Well that is a bit of a deal breaker on continuing to do most of my posting over at homeschoolblogger. I'll keep it and maybe do my regular and sewing posts here and homeschool blogging there? I don't know yet but this whole Flickr photo thing is fantastic - expect to see a lot of kid photos and sewing projects now! :-)

Christmas sewing

KS for Children, originally uploaded by michaeldog_1999.

This is both an update and a test of linking my blog with Flickr photos. I thought I would share some of my Chrismas sewing. This is a new set of PJs for Zach, made from the Kwik Sew for Children's book. The double sleeve comes from instructions from Sewing Mamas, www.sewingmamas.com.

Finished another top - sewing

I don't divide my sewing from my regular blog, so I'll just post here. I finished another maternity top today, Simplicity 4584. I posted a pattern review at www.patternreview.com for anyone particularly interested in the details. With my maternity wardrobe dating back nearly six years now to my pregnancy with Zach, it needed some updated and some weeding out of worn out items. I made a new halter-type top this week adn am pretty pleased with the results. It should be quite comfortable for this summer into fall.

I'm not experienced at all at posting photos but I will try to here: http://www1.snapfish.com/slideshow/AlbumID=161193981/PictureID=3221041395/a=96357778_96357778/t_=96357778

I really enjoy sewing some items for myself this pregnancy. The ones in Motherhood Maternity and so forth are overpriced and fit poorly anyway. This is one case when sewing for myself really does save money! Plus, it is easier to find a fabric I like on the bolt than find a ready made top with a print I like in my size and price range. ;)

Now I'm trying to decide on a new project - hmmm, either another item for me or one for the boys probably. Time to look through patterns and see what calls out to me.

I'm back!

After a looonnngg hiatus from blogger.com (using homeschoolblogger.com), I'm back. I like the community setting over there, all homeschoolers; however, after a week of not being able to log in after a server upgrade, contacting support a couple times and still unable to utilize it I give up for the final time. This is after months of having my posts eaten by a slow unresponsive server, so they really did need that upgrade. The sad part of course is that I lost my blog. I don't think I can import or anything so it's just gone. :(

The good news is that I already had this one, and I hear the html, picture posting, etc., is a whole lot easier over here. Maybe I can finally get some good pictures posted!

I'll update with the news about the family a little later.