Want to guess what this one is? It’s done, so if you’ve seen it, or are secretly stalking me on FaceBook, no fair!

This post runs dangerously close to violating my blogging without obligation commitment, doesn’t it? Maybe I should take that down, I think I have made a commitment, and I do feel an obligation. But perhaps that’s silly. Doesn’t everyone use a blog reader now? So who cares when anyone updates, your reader is always full of 500 posts anyway? My mother-in-law was just complaining that there is no RSS button on my blog. I suppose my layout probably needs some love, but that will happen sometime in the next century, when I am DEAD and have lots of time! Sigh. I could get into blogging from the afterlife. I always did like Dar William’s Alleluia. See, I am sleep deprived and RANTING! Are you getting enough sleep? So that’s two questions for you, are you getting enough sleep, and what is that thing? Three: do you care if the blogs you read update regularly? (And do you hate it as much as I do when every post is apologizing for how they haven’t posted recently? (FOUR!)) Also I just realized I only have a month until Rebecca’s birthday! OMG.

They are looking for projects focusing on children this time, so check out their call for submissions, I know all you crazy people are full of great ideas for kids!

Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.

I had to immediately go and look it up, it seems to be a reordering of a quote made famous by Theodore Roosevelt, and in any case is awesome!

Some other awesome Teddy quotes from wikiquotes:

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing

There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful business man, or railroad man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a writer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison. [I am so with him here!] It may be true that he travels farthest who travels alone; but the goal thus reached is not worth reaching. And as for a life deliberately devoted to pleasure as an end — why, the greatest happiness is the happiness that comes as a by-product of striving to do what must be done, even though sorrow is met in the doing. There is a bit of homely philosophy, quoted by Squire Bill Widener, of Widener’s Valley, Virginia, which sums up one’s duty in life: “Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.”

Might as well be the stash buster’s mantra. Use what you have.

Need something for dinner? Pantry diving. Use what you have.

Don’t have enough time? Use what you have.

Need more exercise? Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are. You’ve got shoes, start running. Park in the farthest spot, take the stairs.

Waiting to start until everything is perfect? Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are. Get to it!

I think I’m going to have to put that over my stove like AfricanKelli. Or somewhere.

What, you were expecting something crafty? Maybe tomorrow.

What quotes are you finding inspiring right now?

Drea says:
I’m not sure if this giveaway is over, but either way, I would be all over the book holder! Congratulations on your success!

Once she sends me her address I will send it to Storey Publishing. (The best kind of giveaway is one where you don’t have to go to the post office yourself! Ha.) And thank you random.org, this time I decided what to do with the number *before* I rolled it, so didn’t myself all tangled up in how I was supposed to count comments this time! Practice! That probably means I should have more giveaways, right?

Holi is a Hindu festival of spring. Spring. It isn’t remotely spring anymore, but I was just looking through my photos for something else, and aren’t these beautiful? I love Holi. This year I was brave/foolish enough to take my good camera, and although my camera survived it needed a good cleaning, and my camera case was an entirely different matter. Well, it did survive, but I think I spent over an hour trying to get the red powder out of its many cracks and seams. I seem to remember eventually resorting to the hose… So I don’t know what it was I was doing in April that was so important, but obviously what I *should* have been doing was sharing these!

Now go make a mess!

Back on track.

For the Board:
Materials – $4 enormous bin of sidewalk chalk (you really need at least 4 sticks of every color for a good sized board, and I was doing skimpy scribble coloring for many squares.)

Time – This probably took us a couple hours of mixed lazy/focused drawing with some kids helping in interesting ways.

Board Construction – I drew a wiggly line, then went down it drawing outline boxes of the appropriate color, wedge shaped around the tighter curves and generally wonky approximate squares. I was aiming for about 18″ which is a nice size to stand in the middle of. After I drew the whole board in outline we worked on coloring it in. It took a while. Towards the end my husband started drawing in monochrome spirals and checker boards and stripes. Rebecca started making short-cuts. It was her birthday so I just let her handle that part of the game design. There was one that went from square 5 to just about the end, woo!

To play you also need colored dice or spinners or something – We bought a bag of little wood cubes, put them all on the table and put a blotch of red on each side. Then mom turned them all over to another side and somebody put a blotch of a different color on that side. Repeat.

Game Play:::: I wanted this to be something the kids could play in parallel without having shove-y competitive races. So everyone had their own die, and they rolled and moved along to the next matching colored square at their own speed, there was no turn taking, and whenever you got to the end you got a prize. Everyone was starting at different times, whenever they showed up to the party, so that was another factor that cut down on the competitive factor. Which was a factor for me since I wanted to make something that under-5′s would all enjoy with minimum tears since it was a birthday party. Practicing loosing is great at home (fast turn over and repeat games like tic-tac-toe really help) but our preschool teacher says that kids aren’t really developmentally ready to handle loosing until 8.

The prize!!! At the end was my husband the Candy King, complete with his ring pops and his chest of candy treasure, mostly ring-pops and candy necklaces, mixed in with Mardi Gras beads we got thrown at us in New Orleans. The kids got to take any one thing out of the chest. The candy was the more powerful motivator. Some kids went around and around, but the whole board probably took them 5-15 minutes depending on age and concentration (and whether they insisted on throwing the dice 15 feet away…), so the actual sugar consumption was not that high. It was fun though!

The real candy consumption came at the end with the candy catapult. Coming up soon?

And, since I really want to send my pattern to all you fabulous people that don’t even know you were temporary winners, but I am still actually trying to experiment with running a so far rather ineffective little business, here is a coupon code for 50% off my Etsy store for the next week. MAYGIVE50 Everyone wins! Maybe? I have a headache now. And I’ve never done coupon codes, we’ll see if it even works. Woo!