I'm feeling crafty today...

Oh, I can't resist a good pun.  Adam has certainly rubbed off on me these last few years.  :)

Anyway, I've been in a crafty mood lately and just needed a visit to the store to pick up some things to get rolling.  My first project, which I started last night but finished this morning, is a small drawstring bag made from a washcloth for my bar of soap in the shower.  Lately, Anne keeps trying to grab the soap and eat it during her baths, and storage space in our shower is rather limited (I'll come back to this issue later), so I needed something to get it out of her way.  I stumbled across an idea similar to this on Pinterest and made it work for me.  The original idea took two washcloths and sewed them together into a simple bag.  It works like a loofah and doesn't leave a soapy mess where you store it.  Well, I was looking at washcloths and decided that two would make a rather large bag.  In the end, I purchased a pack of baby washcloths (6 pack for $5) because they are smaller, thinner, and I could get more for less.  I only used one for my bag, so Anne will get the rest.  I just sewed it up by hand (it seemed a waste of time to try and get my hands on a machine for something that would only take a few minutes once I got it going), added a bit of cord for the drawstring, and voila!  Nothing to it, really.

Now, my next issue was the amount of storage space in the shower.  There really is only room for our shampoos and conditioners and Adam's washcloth.  I came up with a super easy and cheap storage solution that, if it doesn't work out, I'm okay with it and not out very much money.  I purchased a cheap shower curtain from Target (something like $2.25), and used an empty juice container and my lovely new glue gun.

I pulled the label off the juice container and cut it so I could use the bottom half.  Sorry, but I don't have pictures of the process.  Once I got going, I sort of forgot and well, all you have is the start and the finished product.  Anyway, I also cut a few holes in the bottom so that water could drain out and it would be less likely to accrue mildew.  Then I pulled out my shower curtain and cut it as well.  I figured I only needed the top foot and a half or so, and three holes at the top to hook into the shower curtain rings ought to do it.  I cut two pieces about the same size, and then cut one of them so it was only about 6 inches tall.  That one I hot glued upside down to the bottom of the other.  I also glued on juice container.  The final product here

can give you an idea of what I did, in case I confused anyone (wouldn't be the first time).  So now I can store my new soap bag as well as my razor and Anne's rubber ducks.  And if it doesn't work, or the weight eventually pulls too much on the holes on the top, I've still got more curtain to work with.  Also, there's a bunch from the bottom that I can use in case I need a large sheet of plastic for anything.  Right now, I'm thinking it would make a good cape or two...

And, lastly, I finally finished a project I started about two months ago.  And by finished, I mean I finally had my glue gun out and spent a whole minute finishing this.

Not too shabby, really, considering I've never made a stuffed animal before and I was working from a picture rather than a pattern.  But now that it's done, I can put it in a box and mail it off to my unborn nephew.

Up next, a birthday banner for Anne's party, a cute button decoration for her room, and a lovely Halloween costume that I've already started.  Stay tuned!

As a Result of Watching M*A*S*H Last Night...

What I know about my grandpa's life before I was born can be summed up in only a few sentences.  He was born in 1932 in California.  His mother was an inactive member of the church and his father was a much older (he was 59 when my grandpa was born) Mexican who refused to teach his children Spanish because he realized that to get anywhere in this country, his kids should know English.  My grandpa joined the Marines at 18 and served for 23 years, reaching the rank of 1st sergeant.  He served in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, earning a Purple Heart in the latter.  After his retirement, he worked in odd jobs (mowing lawns at a golf course, working at scout camp in the summer, among others) and drove my grandmother crazy by pretending not to know how to do things.  My grandpa has a brother and a number of half-siblings whom I've never met, though I've met a few of my mother's cousins.

And that's about it.  I mean, there are a few anecdotes about his days in the service that I've heard, but most of them I've heard from my mother.  He doesn't talk about his years in the military much, if at all.  When I was in the seventh grade, we had an assignment to interview and write a paper about a veteran.  Naturally, I chose my grandfather and emailed him the questions to which I needed answers.  He emailed back (then a marvel, though I suppose my grandmother might have typed up the answers while he talked), and all the answers were short and to the point.  He shared as little as possible, and as a result, my paper was rather short and informative with little personality behind it.

But I got to thinking about him and his military service last night.  I have many questions.  Why did he join?  What were his responsibilities?  What did he do when stationed in  places like Japan where he wasn't directly in any wars?  If he made a career out of service, why didn't he make it past the rank of 1st sergeant?  I mean, surely that long in the Marines and they'll make you an officer, right?  I researched him a little bit this morning, but I don't have any answers to my questions.  All I could find on ancestry.com were the muster rolls, which list names, serial numbers, and rank.  It seems I may only get answers from talking to him in person (a phone call just doesn't seem quite enough).  Unfortunately, I don't know when I'll see him next, as our next trip to California doesn't include a side trip to Forest Hill.

My New Reading List

This last week, I came across a couple of book lists that were inspired by Rory Gilmore, a main character on the show "Gilmore Girls."  Most are books that were mentioned or seen in the show, while others seem to be books that her character would read.  I've combined the lists and edited out ones that were strictly movie references (yes, I've seen the show enough that I knew that) and some other ones that I just don't want to read (such as Stephen King novels; I read one once.  I'm good).  Below is my version of these lists:


1984 by George Orwell
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes by Maya Angelou
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Art of Fiction by Henry James
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Aurora Leigh and Other Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Babe by Dick King-Smith
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney
The Bhagava Gita
The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
Candide by Voltaire
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
The Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe by Edgar Allen Poe
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Cousin Bette by Honor’e de Balzac
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Daisy Miller by Henry James
Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Deenie by Judy Blume
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
The Distant Land of My Father by Bo Caldwell
The Divine Comedy by Dante
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
Dry by Augusten Burroughs
Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
Eloise by Kay Thompson
Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
Emma by Jane Austen
The Emperor Jones by Eugene O’Neill
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Ethics by Spinoza
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Extravagance by Gary Krist
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Trembling by Amelie Nothomb
The Fellowship of the Ring: Book 1 of The Lord of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
Fight Club by Chad Palahniuk
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Fletch by Gregory McDonald
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
The Graduate by Charles Webb
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Hedda Gabbler by Henrik Ibsen
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III          
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland
Howl by Allen Gingsburg
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Idlewild by Nick Sagan
The Iliad by Homer
If This Is a Man by Primo Levi
I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov
Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams by Sylvia Plath
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D. H. Lawrence
The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Light in August by William Faulkner
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaetan Soucy
The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice
The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Love Story by Erich Segal
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Manticore by Robertson Davies
The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
Marathon Man by William Goldman
March by Geraldine Brooks
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
A Modest Proposal by Jonathon Swift
Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Mr Darcy Takes a Wife by Linda Berdoll
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It’s Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken
My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Night by Elie Wiesel
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
The Odyssey by Homer
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Of Mules and Men by Zora Neal Hurston
Old School by Tobias Wolff
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Othello by Shakespeare
The Other Boleyn Girl by Pillipa Gregory
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Postcards from No Man’s Land by Aidan Chambers
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
A Private Matter by Beppe Fenoglio
Property by Valerie Martin
Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Quattrocento by James Mckean
A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
The Return of the King: The Lord of the Rings Book 3 by J. R. R. Tolkien
R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
The Saurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Sexus by Henry Miller
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Shane by Jack Shaefer
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton
Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
The Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
So Many Books, So Little Time by Sara Nelson
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
Songbook by Nick Hornby
Sonnets from the Portuegese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
A Streetcar Named Desiree by Tennessee Williams
Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett
Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Thursday Next Series by Jasper Fforde
Time and Again by Jack Finney
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
Truth and Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
The Two Towers: The Lord of the Rings book 2 by J.R.R. Tolkien
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Unless by Carol Shields
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard
Venetia by Georgette Heyer
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker
What Colour is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles
What Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
White Oleander by Janet Fitch
Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

I've already read a number of these books(the italicized titles), thanks to school and a love of reading, but I plan on reading as many of these as I can.  Here's to some interesting reading ahead...