for the sandwich thief

This is a different kind of sandwich art. This collection of acrylic abstract paintings which showcase a sandwich's ingredients is called "Lunch Box" by Dan Kenneally.

And if my lunch box had the other type of sandwich art here - those intricate, elaborate sandwiches, I wouldn't want anyone stealing my lunch.

Here's a hysterical anti-theft lunch bag.

Anyone who still steals your lunch would be absolutely disgusting!

Hilarious!

Photos from lushlee and here.

Click here for the of-dots-&-things version of this post - the one with the elaborate sandwiches you'd need to protect with the moldy lunch bag above.

easter eggs

I've always wanted to dye eggs for Easter because of the delightful, lovely color options. But I've never gotten around to buying the dyes (what do they use? food coloring? paint?), laying out the newspaper and mixing the dyes to get to the colors I want.

I surfed the web to find out what dye to use and I read about a "kit", which I assume will not be easy to find in Manila since we're not the Easter-Bunny-believing-type-of-folk. I then found out how to dye eggs with food coloring here, but maybe because I am such an undomesticated goddess (see related post here), I felt a bit nauseous at the list of supplies that needed to be gathered and daunted when I got to the part of having to measure & mix vinegar and hot water and food coloring. I don't even know where to get food coloring though I figure I should be able to find some in the baking needs section, a grocery aisle I've stopped visiting since I realized those tiny colored stars and rainbow sprinkles don't really taste like candy. (Okay, I'm starting to feel that you're thinking this is a major dumb blood moment - No, that wasn't a typo because I underwent blood transfusion when I gave birth to Noah and have always felt I got dumber after that. - but you have to understand I don't even know how to fry an egg! And yes, I know some super-moms even tie-dye or marble their easter eggs!).

Luckily, I found out you can actually use Kool-Aid to dye eggs! And as some of you might already know from here, I love Kool-Aid, so we always have some in our kitchen cupboard (no need to make an extra trip to the grocery!). And all you need to do is dissolve the Kool-Aid powder in a cup of water (no vinegar or measuring needed!), and you can go ahead and dip the egg & scoop it out to dry.

Pam (who fully discloses here what worked and what didn't in her Kool-Aid-dyeing experiment) says Lime makes lovely green and Berry, a gorgeous blue. The Orange actually turns out a deep, rich yellow and Strawberry is more orange than red.

I like the idea of excitedly waiting to find out what colors we will get with each flavor. And dyeing eggs in the midst of fruity smells! I think I might just get around to dyeing some eggs this Easter!

Who knows? Maybe next Easter, I can move on to food coloring and create these pretty, pretty colors!

Happy Easter everyone!

Photos from aliedwards and polkadotshoppingbag.

Click here for a different kind of Easter.  

partyline, pakibaba

Do you remember the days of the rotary phone? Did you dial 9 and wait for the rotary dial to go back to its position? Or were you one of those who would force the dial back to 9?

Do you remember the days when someone interrupts your conversation and you have to say, "Partyline, pakibaba"?

Do you remember the time when the yellow pages were so important? Nowadays, they seem to be more useful this way...

Okay, my Lola (grandma) still uses her thick yellow pages book. So maybe they are still useful. But I'm sure even my 90-year-old Lola will agree that these are a much more beautiful use of ye olde yellow pages.

Photos from here and adverblog.

measurements: from paper feet to hands

Do you remember when you were a kid and your mom would trace your foot on a piece of paper so she could buy you a pair of shoes? I remember how it tickled when the pencil went around my foot and how she'd test the cut-out paper foot inside a shoe that could still fit.

I realize that I don't do this with my kids. I use my hand and arm to measure my kids feet, chest (for shirts) and waist. So I hold the armpit area of Noah's shirt with my right hand - between my thumb and index finger. Then I pull the other armpit with my left hand and hold it against my outstretched right arm. Noah's shirt measurement is from my thumb to the line on the back of my elbow. Isabella's would be the same plus 2 inches. This works for Isabella's waist as well.

For Noah's waist - which is still too small to reach the back of my elbow, I fold his pants in the middle and measure the halfway point on my hand. His folded pants would start at my wristline to the middle of my middle finger.

Noah's shoe fits right between my wristline and the line at the back of my elbow.

 

Don't you think my hand measurements are just as good as those giraffe height charts at the pediatrician's office? :)

 

I store these measurements on my phone so I can buy the kids clothes and shoes that fit perfectly even when they're not with me (This is most useful on out-of-the-country business trips for pasalubong shopping). Of course, I have to update the measurements every couple of months. But it sure beats having to bring out a tape measure (which isn't so easy to roll back into place) or paper-feet when measuring clothes at the mall.

Photos of this fun hand-&-foot painting kiddie activity from playtimebreak.

Click here for a previous post about feet.

dear person who used up the roll of TP

This is for the people who used the office bathroom stall before me: the one who finished the roll of toilet paper on the TP holder, the one who used one of the new rolls of toilet paper piled up on the toilet tank lid (the ledge behind the upright toilet seat cover), the one who used more of that new roll but still left it on the toilet tank lid, and the next user who used even more of that new roll but still left it on the toilet tank lid.

Let me describe to you what I see when I enter the bathroom cubicle. There is an empty TP roll on the TP holder which is actually just a hook. It's not even the old kind with a cylinder you need to push to one side so the other end would detach from the wall. That requires some effort to change toilet paper rolls. Ours is a hook so one simply needs to slip the new roll on it. But when I enter the bathroom stall, the empty roll is still on this hook. At the back of the toilet is a neat stack of about five new toilet paper rolls. In front of the neat stack - in a more haphazard way - but still sitting on the toilet tank lid, is one (sometimes, two) half-finished roll(s) of toilet paper.

Here's what I cannot fathom. After you do your thing, you obviously have to reach over behind your back for that roll of TP. Even if you decided to hold onto the roll before peeing, you would have still had that roll in your hand at some point. And yet, you found it easier to return the roll on the toilet tank rather than slip it onto the TP holder hook.

Am trying to convince Human Resources to install as many TP holders in our bathroom stall as there are in the above photo of the Louvre -- so there would surely be tissue on at least one of these TP holders until the end of the workday. But until then, dear officemate who finished the roll of toilet paper, I wish you would try to throw the empty roll into the trashcan and replace it with a new one. After all, it's not like the empty roll left on the wall is a work of art like this.

Photos of the TP in the Louvre Museum in Paris from here and the TP roll art from lushlee.

Click here for previous posts from the Dear... series.