We have a winner!

Or 3 winners, to be precise. Thank you random number generator! Though I will say it is strangely terrible not to be able to send you all the books you want. What wonderful desires you have. I have a new reading list.

AndieD: Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day (which I am going to borrow from you)
Wendy: Making More Plants: The Science, Art, and Joy of Propogation (which I am sending you used because it is $250! Ha ha.)
Laura S: The Wind's Twelve Quarters

Please email me with your mailing addresses, and we will get these books on their way. Plus, I think there will be enough money left to do this again! Should I just pull from here, or should we redo the contest from the start? I can't think clearly.

Meanwhile, fish with brown butter. Also, shoes with brown butter. And cat with brown butter. I am planning to put brown butter on everything I own.

Have a lovely weekend.

xo

Hello, dear blogamists!

Besides the incredible nick-of-time arrival of spring--birdsong, twilit dinners, crocuses, bare-legged children, heaven--lots of other stuff has been happening around here.

Birdy, for example, is heading off to college.

Have fun, sweetie! Use the generic brand of Monistat! Text me!

("I know what kind of cake I want this year!" she announced months ago. "A frog pond with lily pads!" 2 boxes of lime Jell-o, 1 bag of gummy frogs, and 1 flower candy mold later: voila. "You should totally pitch this to the magazine!" she said, and I just might.)

Craney, too, is growing--though he doesn't seem to realize.


And Ben! His hands have gotten so big, he keeps--yowch!--poking his thumb through his ear.


Meanwhile (natch) I've been cooking up a storm.

There is a super-spring recipe for asparagus that is almost literally irresistible. The smell of the butter browning will make everyone in your whole zip code salivate.

And that yummy, yummy coconut chicken soup you order at the Thai restaurant you like? You can make it yourself and it's delicious.

But are you here for the next give-away? Of course. I understand. To recap: when I recommend books here, and you click the links and go to amazon, they give me a small percentage of the money you spend on that visit, regardless of what you buy. It comes in the form of store credit--so let's use it! But first, a few questions.

Who bought Footloose the 25th Anniversary Edition?
Who bought the Holy Bible on Kindle?
Who bought the Blind Melon album?
Who is going to Europe and bought all those travel guides?

I love, love, love that they show me all that! Don't worry, though. I don't know who you are. (Except you, with all the exercise bands: they told me your name. Just kidding!)

This is a simple give-away: leave the name of the one book you most want in the comments (comment only once, please). I am going to pick three winners at random and send them the books they picked. I'll post the winners next Friday. If there's still money left after that, we'll do it again.

Have a wonderful weekend, dear ones. xoxo

And the winner . . .

of this lovely book
is

"lastdogz said...

The best advice...to sing to your child. I was told that singing improves your child vocabulary, and I have to agree, I feel like my 2.5 year old son has a great vocabulary. But more than that, I love singing with him just for the joy of it. I love that he doesn't care if I screw up the lyrics or sing off-key. He asks to sing all the time. It's just such a simple pleasure, so basic. I didn't, however, realize how awfully morbid all the old folk songs I grew up with really are. Check out the full lyrics to My Darling Clementine sometime.
I just posted my first ever comment on family.com. I'm greenmombr there."

Plus, doesn't that happen to be excellent advice? I actually do know the lyrics to Darling Clementine. "Dreadful sorry." Yikes.

Thank you for posting so thoughtfully. Did you get a chance to read through? What an amazing mix, right? It's interesting, too, the split between "take care of yourself" and "take care of your kids." Both important, certainly. I've been thinking recently something along the lines of "Make sure you're raising people whose company you enjoy, since you're going to spend a lot of time in it." I should have entered my own give-away!

Thank you all so much. And lastdogz, would you please email me your address?

I was actually thinking I'd take a picture of the on-line random number generator to show you--but I couldn't get up and get the camera (see reason below), so I thought, "Oh, I'll just use photobooth on the computer!" Um, yeah, Cath. Great idea! Like the computer version of trying to see your own eyelid. Instead, I took a photobooth picture of my great and furry encumberedness.

For a good soup recipe and an excess of self pity, please see my latest posting here.

And come back soon. I'm going to do another book give-away--a book of your own choosing--to use that Amazon credit we all generated here with those awesome book links.

Have a fantastic weekend! xo