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I’ve been getting the KidsOutAndAbout.com newsletter ready tonight, but luckily I’ve got a big list of links that I’ve been meaning to share with you.

All Over Albany has a post on The Snow Train to North Creek.

I just love Glennon’s approach to dealing with tantrums over at Momastery. Seriously, I can’t look at that thumb’s up photo without giggling. It reminds me of one of my favorite things about blogging. When the day’s going crappily, I know that I can kvetch to you all.

The TU’s Parenting Blog has a post with folks suggesting where to donate used toys.

Mamatoga visited a new indoor play center in Ballston Lake, The Wonder Room.

The TU’s Your Day Blog shares that you can get two lift tickets for $20 to ski West Mountain on Wednesday nights.

And you’ve probably already seen this “I’m Elmo and I Know It” parody video that’s been going around, but just in case.

Update: okay, okay. Have I mentioned that I’m not too tech-savvy? My first plug-in, which would have kept you in the dark at Capital District Fun all day, didn’t work, so you just got a teensy blackout. And here’s more info. if you’d like it:

If you spend slightly less time on the internet than I do, or if you’ve been taking care of toddlers or sick children, you might not realize that there are going to be quite a few blacked-out sites tomorrow. Capital District Fun will be one of them. I wanted to give you a little warning in case you want to look something up and write it down with an old-fashioned pencil.

I am blacking out because I like to link & comment with wild abandon, and I like to link to people & places where people are talking about all sorts of things. Sometimes these are vitally important and politically relevant. Sometimes they’re tasteless, not-suitable-for-the-kids spoofs of pop culture. I want access to all of them without fear that my site, or the sites that I love, will be shut down.

Here’s more information, in case you’re looking for it.

FightFortheFuture.org video (this has a quick form to send to Congress) and information on the SOPA Strike.

TechDirt’s got what it calls The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas.

If you don’t feel like reading, and you’d rather listen to a guy ranting in a British accent while you, I don’t know, fold laundry or wash dishes, here’s your link.

Here’s a commentary from Time’s Techland Blog.

Here’s a legal memo by a smart guy from Harvard.

The Bloggess takes on SOPA in video form and makes us fall in love with her all over again.

A surprise hit among the Christmas gifts was this Thames & Kosmos Electronics Workshop:

Cute W picked this out for M, and they’ve had fun doing the experiments together. Today was M’s favorite one yet: they made an electrical circuit that was only complete when they put the two ends of a wire in a cup full of water.

This has been a father-daughter venture, so I didn’t know much about it. I decided to interview M:

Me: “So, are the experiments easy or hard to do?”

M: “They’re pretty easy if you’re someone who know what they’re doing. Like me.”

Me: “Did I hear you guys reading a story or something?”

M: “Yes. It’s got a story about Robert the Robot who’s going into space. It teaches lots of technical science stuff, which sounds really boring, but it’s actually cool. Really cool.”

Score one for STEM promotion at our house!

Now the girls are settled in their pajamas and reading, but they’re going to be allowed to say up late to watch the Broncos with Daddy. Soon it’ll be time for some Buffalo Chicken Dip. Life is good.

I wrote a review of Saturday’s Laurie Berkner Band concert. It’s over on KidsOutAndAbout.com. I was a little scattered that day because we were running straight to the show after ice skating, so I forgot my camera. But there are photos from the concert over on The Angel Forever, in case you’re wondering what a “a surprisingly chic giraffe-print pouffy party dress with pink ruffles” looks like. The review is a love-fest, and not just because we got review tickets and a giveaway: pack I just love her. Oh, and not only that, but Deb tweeted the review @KidsOutAlbany, and Laurie tweeted back. It’s like, she almost talked to me.

And speaking of cool women, I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out that Amy Poehler and friends have a web-based show called “Smart Girls at the Party” with the tagline “change the world by being yourself.” Holy cow I think she’s fabulous. The girls haven’t seen any of the shows, because if I said, “Girls, girls, look, look! Check out this cool show,” then they’d watch it, all skeptical, and possibly roll their eyes. If I look like I happen to be watching it all by myself when they walk by and look over my shoulder, they will be hooked. So, what is this exactly? Tragically manipulative? Not passive-aggressive surely, but passive-awesome? Discuss.

And if you aren’t already overwhelmed by social media, the splendors of the internet, and the fabulosity (yes, I just made that one up) of womanhood, did you hear about the Bloggess and her traveling red dress? If you’re a regular reader, you know that I think that The Bloggess is hilarious, although between the guffaws she’s also shared that she suffers from depression and anxiety. Just about a week ago she posted that she struggles with trying to control a self-harming disorder, and when she did, her readers and fans, in addition to passing along comments and virtual hugs, showed their support by donating to support her traveling red dress. To hear more about that, check out  the original red dress post with lots of follow-up updates, and here’s an article from Forbes.com (which made me laugh at the end, because the writer discloses that she bought a bunch of red dresses after researching the story).

And finally, in honor of future supremely awesome women, if anyone needs to be hooked up with Girl Scout cookies this year, it’s M’s first year selling them. If you’re local or family and want some thin mints at the end of the month, she’s your gal.

I’ve been collecting links to share. And I’m too lazy to write. So, here’s what I’ve got:

I thought that saying I’m an organ donor on my driver’s license was enough, but apparently it’s not. So here’s a form for New Yorkers to fill out to register as organ donors.

I thought that this video, created by a girl with her sisters to support The Girl Effect, was awesome. Her mom must be so proud!

New Moon Girls has a list of Girls Choice Books.

Have you heard about Khan Academy? If you or your kids want to learn about something–math, art history, economics–there are tons of free tutorials.

The family of a woman who died of liver cancer on December 15th is collecting breast milk for her newborn baby Violet. They live in Dutchess County and there’s a drop-off spot in Coxsackie, but if I hear of someone collecting closer, I’ll update this. Update: Call 813-9290 or 788-7821 if you want to donate locally. This is a friend of a friend of that Katie girl whose blog you read, if that’s enough of a reference for you!

Today I’m just sharing a bunch of holiday links. Because I’ve got Ewok cloaks to sew. Ready?

The TU’s Parent to Parent blog has Tips for a Toddler Christmas.

Mamatoga has Ten Chanukah Crafts.

Albany Kid’s got a post full of cold, hard facts about Santa’s sleigh.

The Bloggess proves that Santa is real.

So, I’ve had a somewhat emotionally exhausting day with a teacher conference that I feared would be contentious scheduled for smack dab in the middle of my day. The conference actually turned out quite peaceful and cordial, but my jaw is still sore from night-time stress teeth-grinding for the past two nights. I’d told myself that I’d treat myself to the reward of actually making my dang wreath after the conference. It didn’t happen. Instead, I’d forgotten that I’d promised to proofread something for Cute W’s work, and then J came down with a killer case of writer’s block. She was only supposed to come up with a few spelling sentences, but she imposes excessive demands on herself and wants to come up with clever sentences that  incorporate 3 or 4 of her spelling words in a single sentence. After much moaning, hand-wringing, and (more!) teeth gnashing, I called it after two sentences and wrote the teacher a note instead. Meanwhile I was late for making dinner.

The rest of the evening has melted away in a similar fashion. So, sigh, I’m just not going to get a chance to tell you about another cool giveaway coming up (tomorrow!).

Instead, I’ll share two links with you

I liked this iVillage article with suggestions on how you can prove that Santa exists.

I also recently passed along a local holiday shopping list over on All Over Albany. Alas, Instead of using photographs of the lovely wares, like this one with cool stuff from Divinitea  . . .

Or some of these lovely little trinkets from Northeastern Fine Jewelry. . .

the editors chose to forgo them and instead publish an unbelievably enormous photograph of me. Wow. . . that’s big. Thanks to my friend who took the picture: I would have made sure that you got credit if I’d realized that the picture itself would be so big. And prominent. And also big. Not like it’s a bad picture. You know, it’s a good picture. But also, awfully big.

Click on over  if you want the details on these lovely items and other local holiday gift ideas. But you might want to squint a little bit so I don’t scare you.

So I mentioned that a couple of weekends ago I was helping out with some craftiness at my church. I had organized two crafts:  felt ornaments , which we’ve done before, and wire-wrapped ornaments. I got the idea for a wire-wrapped star from this Family Fun how-to, but it was not as easy as it appeared. Basically, I was supposed to wrap 18-gauge wire around a star cookie cutter, and then kids could use lighter-weight wire to wrap around the star and make it pretty. Wrapping the wire was a pain in the neck, especially since I wanted to make a bunch for lots of kids to do. Cute W helped by putting some nails into a board, which made wrapping a bit easier, but it was still labor-intensive, and the stars weren’t too pretty.  Of course, I was figuring all this out the night before the event. Ugh.

I decided to wing it and go a little bit more free-form with the craft. First, I Googled and found directions for making these awesome and pretty word ornaments.  Luckily I had a variety of wires to use for the craftiness. I ‘d bought the thick, sturdier 18-gauge wire, but I also had 22- and 24-gauge wire. If you’re looking for wire like this, you’ll usually find it near the jewelry-making section at craft stores. Basically, the lower the number, the thicker, sturdier, more difficult to bend, and  usually more expensive the wire will be. Here are some of the ornaments that we made:

For me, the 22-gauge wire was great for just tooling around with shapes, but it probably wouldn’t have been able to have another wire wrap around it–you’d need a thicker “base wire” for that.  It was fun to just play around with it. Like, that little silver shape next to the heart seemed like a pendant for a necklace that I might buy.

A grown-up added beads to make this Christmas-tree-shaped ornament in just a few minutes:

Cute, right?

I had some leftover wire, and since then, the girls have been delving into it some more.  In fact, I had all of my leftovers set aside, because I planned to make a couple of extra-nice ornaments for the blog. But I didn’t share this plan with girls, and before I knew it, they’d commandeered the leftovers for their own craftiness:

Here are a couple that they made all on their own:

M made the musical note with craft wire, and the bird and matryoshka dolls are made from cut-outs that I’d prepped for the crafting event. They came from this unbelievably adorable  book, Fa La La La Felt, which will make you yearn to craft immediately. Many of the crafts are ambitious, but luckily, they can be taken down a notch to accommodate the patience and skills of children. And/or this blogger.

In fact, I feel a bit guilty, because in the book there are these bee-you-tee-ful matryoshka ornaments that are sewn together with a little batting to give them body, and I did a modified version, and then my kids stole the pieces and modified them some more.  Same deal with the bird: in the book, it was a lovely dove with a coordinating floral-patterned wing piece that I’d planned to make, but one of the kids just had a rick-rack and button party all over it. So these are cute, but the ones in the book are gorgeous.  And absolutely do-able, just not do-able for me right now when I’m also working on Christmas shopping and helping kids with homework and  keeping up with the blog. I was sad that there wasn’t one of those “Look Inside!” options so that you could see the Many Splendid Crafts in the book, so I poked around a bit and located the author’s blog, which is going into my Google Reader.

The wire crafts are going to be part of this year’s Crafty Girl Party. The book is on my Christmas list (hint, hint).

And by “holiday,” I don’t mean Christmas. I mean the next important holiday coming up: Thanksgiving.

Last year I posted about our Thankful Tree. We love the Thankful Tree. For years, it’s been a humble little construction paper-twig tree, like the original idea from Family Fun.

But this year, with that heavy snowfall, we had several branches just lounging all over our front yard. I couldn’t resist an upgrade. And then the twig was so pretty that it seemed a shame to hang those cut-out construction paper leaves, and I remembered that I have one of those fake-leaf garlands. Because while I am not generally a shopper, I am a sucker for a craft store seasonal bargain bin. Voila:

The other day we received an unanticipated package. “A package!” both girls yelled, as their Psychic Possible Gift Perception kicked in. The return address was my mom, so the girls  clustered like cats around tuna while I gestured for space with my scissors. Dangerous but effective.

Look!

New scarves for me, M, and J! Yippee! Nothing like what my mom calls a “happy present!”

And here’s the cutest part:

I mean, come on. How cute is that? “Nanahoney” is her grandmother name because she was planning for “Nana” but the first grandchild was confused because my Dad always refers to her as “Honey.”

Everyone was quite excited and in fact I couldn’t post about the scarves right away because J wore hers to sleep and I couldn’t get a photo.

As for the more painful side of clothes, it’s laundry. Sigh.

You know, summer means wet bathing suits and towels, but with the clothesline, the whole family is pretty well trained. And then the cool weather (and travel soccer) comes around and my hamper is full constantly. And it’s full of things like:

• Pairs of jeans that have been worn for only minutes before a wardrobe change
• Footy pajamas that are pristine and smell pleasantly of fabric softener
• Shin guards
• As many as 6 sweaters at a time

Alright, so I walked right into the shin guard thing. Recently I discovered that with a baking soda scrub-down followed by a wash in the delicate cycle, even the most repugnant fumes can be squelched. But now M wants this treatment after each game or practice, and even if I were up for that, shin guards aren’t designed for consistent washer abuse.

I have asked nicely, explained, reminded, and nagged. So I got a bit of a bee in my bonnet.

Usually these bees result in slightly overwrought essays. But this required something different: a flow chart. I found a free flowchart web site and set to work.

It occurred to me, sometime while I was trying to line up my arrows, that I might not be the only person who suffers from Laundry Challenges. So I made it generic enough to share, and TA, DA! It’s a Laundry Flowchart! (I couldn’t get it to show up on this post, but you can click to a pdf file. Update: Deb from Kids Out and About helped me, so now it’s below–click for a close-up. Thanks, Deb!) It is not aesthetically perfect, but it does get the point across.

J loves the flowchart. She asked me to read it to her and explain exactly how it works. She appreciates it.

I taped it just outside the girls’ rooms.

M hates the flowchart. She thinks it’s humiliating and it’s treating her like a baby and she knows what to do with all of her laundry (a “dammit” is unspoken, but implied, here).

In protest, M turned the flowchart backwards, facing the wall.

I fixed it, conceded that she would be permitted to turn it around during play dates, and explained that the one surefire way of getting rid of the flowchart was to demonstrate her vast laundry knowledge on a daily basis with appropriate disposal of the various items.  Her pair of pajamas lounging on the hall floor was offered as Exhibit A, and the discussion was closed.