Scrumptious Toppers for Tots and Toddlers. Book Review.

I received Scrumptious Toppers for Tots and Toddlers: 30 Hats and Caps from Debby Ware  as a gift and when I saw the cover I thought "oh how fun!" But then I started looking through it and my heart fell a little. In every photo it shows that the hat is not long enough to cover the child's ears and I just have to say that the color choices are often horrific. I know that I can choose my own colors and lengthen the hat to fit my child but then when I really look at them there is nothing in this book that I want to make for my sons. The only hat that I sort of like is the Tea Garden Hat and that is because it has a brim and it isn't suppose to cover ears but that is for a girl which I do not have. I would link to it on Ravelry but nobody seems to have knit it and only 23 hats have been linked to this book. The kids are cute in the photos but the hats just are not making it on the kids' heads. They look too small and the colors again are not flattering.

On the other hand the patters seem well written and it looks like it would be easy to follow them but I don't know what to do with this book now. Keep it for that one hat I like out of it in case I have a girl?

Any of you ever had this happen? Gotten a book on the Internet or as a gift and thought that you would really like it, but when you opened it to look at it you were very disappointed in what was on the pages in the book?

Organize Now! Book Review.

Hello everyone,

Long time, no post. Been busy with internship, family and reorganizing my home.



A few weeks ago I got in the mail a book called Organize Now!: A Week-by-Week Guide to Simplify Your Space and Your Life by Jennifer Ford Berry. It´s a colorful modern looking book that looks like a little organizer on the cover and is much like the size of the average organizer except for the fast amount of pages that are full of information on how to tackle your home and your life and organize it so that you can be proud to have people over and in your closets.

This book is split into 56 weeks of organization where each week you do something new and keep up with what you have already done. The first 4 weeks are about Organizing Yourself, The next 8 weeks are spent organizing your papers, the 7 weeks after that are organizing your things, the 11 weeks after that are spent organizing your High-Traffic Areas such as your living room, the entryway and so fourth, the next 7 weeks are spent on Personal Spaces like closets and jewelery boxes, the next 6 weeks are spent organizing your Storage Areas like your garage and your basement, the next 9 are for special events such as birthdays and the families safety plan, and then the last 4 are your routines such as your meal planing and grocery shopping. Note that some of these won't apply to you like organizing your pet if you don't have any but then you can just jump on over to the next week of organizing.

Jennifer is big on the fact that less is more. She is not going to tell you to just throw everything away but if you don't love it and use it then it is time to part with it in one way or another like selling it on eBay or craigs list. She also talks about how going green can lower you electric bill and has lot of tips on how to go about this.

I love how this book is put into weekly projects and how she tells you how to stay decluttered. The book is beautiful and the great part is when you finish all the weeks then you can restart the book and keep up with it all. There is no guilt trip given just because you have been messy and unorganized up until now, there is just positive regard and even the goals have little places where you can check off what you have accomplished that week.

The only down side to this book is that it is spiral bound. I have had bad results on this type of binding on books I use much. Usually the cover at some point just comes off because the spiral rips out of the cover. Also sometimes the once a year and once every 3-4 months things on the check list don't fit into what you are doing that week but that might just be the way I see these things. Other than that I recommend this book to anybody that is trying to take control of the modern home that is filled with things we believe that we have to have. Join me in my effort of owning less junk and more money because when you are organized then you don't have to buy double of something because you can't find it and you buy less stuff that you don't love or need because when you do go shopping you will ask yourself those hard questions before spending your precious hard earned money.

USA ranks number 31 with Save the Children!

Did you know that the USA ranks number 31 on the Save the Children´s State of Mothers 2011?

M right after his birth in Iceland.
Delivered by a midwife naturally.

At the top of the list is Norway, then Australia, and then my home country Iceland comes in third as the best places to be a mother.

This is all based on mother and child health and mortality rate, socioeconomic status, access to clean food and water and their level of education.

At the bottom of this list is Afghanistan.

In Norway, Australia and Iceland over 80% of all women use some sort of modern birth control, almost every birth is monitored by a health professional like a doctor or a midwife, most women have more than 14 years of education, the average Norwegian woman reaches 83 years of age, and only 1 of every 175 women loose a child in the first 5 years of its life.

While in Afghanistan, only 16% of women use some sort of modern birth control, the average Afghan mother only gets an average of 5 years education, and won't reach the age of 45. Then there are the children where 1 of every 5 die before the age of 5 and compared to that statistic each mother in Afghanistan will suffer a loss of a child.

Why is the US rated 31 on the list? “We are the wealthiest country in the world, but there are still pockets of our population who are not getting the health care they need,” said Mary Beth Powers, a reproductive health adviser for the U.S.-based Save the Children, which compiled the rankings based on health data from countries and agencies worldwide.

The US maternal mortality rate is so high,1 in 2,100 die because of complications pertaining to birth. More women die during or immediately following childbirth than in any other industrialized nation. Only Albania, the Russian Federation, and Moldova scored lower in this category of industrialized nations.

The US children under 5 years of age, mortality rate is very high, with 8 deaths to every 1000 births, comparable to less developed countries such as Latvia. A child in the U.S. is more than twice as likely to die in the first five years of life as a child in Norway, Greece, Iceland, Finland, Japan, Singapore,  Luxembourg, Slovenia or Sweden.

The US is the country with the fifth lowest preschool enrollment rate. Only 58 percent of American children are enrolled in preschool. The U.S. ranks 5th-lowest in the developed world in early childhood education.

As most mothers know, we have the least generous maternity leave policy of any developed nation.  The U.S. maternity leave policy of 12 weeks of unpaid leave is called “the least generous of all wealthy nations”.  Of all the countries on this list, only one offered women less: Montenegro. In Iceland the maternity leave is 5 months and it is also paid leave. Letting mother and child recover, bond and breastfeed.  Even India has 12 weeks of 100% paid leave.

The US is lagging with regard to the political status of women. Only 17% of congressional seats are held by women, compared to 45 percent in Sweden, one of the countries that made the top ten.

By posting this I hope that someone that knows somebody can make a difference in the lives of both women in the US lives and in the countries that rated the lowest on the list. Woman should have the right to modern birth control with out it costing them anything and they have the right to stay home with their babies with out it being a strain on their finances.  The poor can not afford 12 weeks of no pay while at home with a baby.

Yarn Play!

Arroyo

Hello everybody! I´m happy to announce that my Spring 2011 semester is over and that my Summer semester in Grad School will not start till the beginning of June. At the end of July I will finish my last class in my Master´s Degree in Counseling Psychology and will only have internship left in the fall. I can´t believe that this degree is almost over. Graduation is in December.

But enough about that. Do you SEE this yarn?!!! I got it in the mail 2 days ago and I have been dieing to start knitting with it. It is a test yarn called Arroyo from Malabrigo and these are test colors that I am trying and going to let them know what I think of and you will also get to know. The top one is called Arcoiris, the Red one is called Jupiter, the dark one to the left is called Escoria, and the grey ones are called Plomo. It´s a sport weight superwash merino wool and Oh I am so in love. I can´t wait to wind it up and then knit it up into something amazing. Just touching them is amazing.

What yarn are you really loving these days?