Vox Publica

As a busy mom of two, I like to do as much of my shopping online as possible. That can be a risk, of course, specially when buying apparel and it was one that turned out badly when I shopped from Motherwear.

I bought a nursing bra and a nursing top. The nursing bra was horrible. It was a cheap piece of crap, made from the cheapest, ugliest nylon and providing no support at all. Furthermore it was itchy and got unberable to wear after a couple of hours. Yes, I should have realized that it would suck by looking at its fabric (nylon/spandex) but I never imagined that a company would get away with selling such bad quality product $19.

I also made the mistake of not looking at the fabric of the nursing top I bought. It's nice looking but it's made of 50% polyester and the fabric is tough, non-breathable and just plain uncomfortable.

The result is that I will never shop from Motherwear again.

Camila had been suffering from painful gas for several weeks before we finally tried Dr. Brown's bottles. These bottles have a special insert that allow for air to escape while the baby is eating. My mom had strongly recommend them as they seemed to work on my niece, but I was skeptical. She was right. Since we got them last week Camila's gas has decreased significantly. She's still gassy - though now it seems most of her gas is intestinal rather than stomach - but it's nowhere as intense as it was before. Now I wish I would have bought them sooner.

Yahoo has changed its layout and it's for the worse. For some reason, they've decided to make it firefox unfriendly - many of the new buttons the site now uses are invisiable to firefox users. The RSS reader at My Yahoo also seems to have problems. *sigh*

In the last month or so we've noticed that our service from Netflix has slowed down considerably. While they used to mail us movies the same day they received them, now they wait one or two days before mailing them. My brother, also a subscriber, was so enraged by this slowdown and the inability to communicate with customer service that he canceled and join Blockbusters instead. I was reserving judgement until I decided to do a small survey on a popular bulletin board - the majority of those who responded had noticed a slow down as well. One poster said she asked customer service about it and they'd said they'd had such an increase in business that it was taking them time to adjust. Maybe, or maybe they did it on purpose. Is it a coincidence that the slowdown followed the reduction of pricing to which they were forced by competitive pressures?

A January posting at the Digital Lifestyles blog provides an answer. According to research firm SG Cowen & Co, which has been carrying out a survey of DVD postal rental services in four US markets, Netflix has reduced its service by buying less new releases and shipping less movies. This saves them money at the price of users like us.

A quick search online shows that this deterioration of service has been noticed by many users, and it's even been covered by the local news. Apparently, it is Netflix's policy to slow down shipments to heavy users, hoping they'll be driven away, no doubt. But the slowdown seems to hit more than heavy users, however.

In any case, we're considering canceling. Does anyone know of any alternatives?

BTW, their secret customer service numbers seem to be 800-279-5688 or 888-638-3549

Before Camila was born I thought I might be able to get away without buying a new stroller to accomodate my two children. We already had two stroller and a third one seemed overkill. Mika can walk quite well, and our Peg Perego Pliko has a very small platform that would allow her to ride standing up if the need be.

Things didn't turn out as planned. The platform in the Pliko is almost useless when the sit is reclined all the way, you can ride on it, but only by leaning back a great ammount. Moreover, Mika immediately declared that this was her stroller, and that she wanted to sit on it. I figured she already had enough displacement issues as it was, and it probably wouldn't help her much to be literally displaced from her stroller.

But even when I could convince Mika to let Camila ride while she woke, the logistics didn't work well. Michaela is three and convinced she must explore every single thing in her environment, from each and every parking meter and tree, to every leaf and piece of garbage in the floor, to every vegetable, animal or mineral that chances upon her path. Walking with her is a painfully slow affair, made even more miserable by Camila's general discomfort with stroller-riding and the likelihood of having her scream at the top of her lungs if we stop at all.

So by the time Camila was a few weeks old we realized we did need to get a double stroller. Several people, including my sister Kathy, recommended the sit n' stand, as a smaller, lighter alternative. The reviews of it at epenions and other websites were mixed, but I figured I'd buy a used one off craigslist and if it didn't work out, I'd sell it. So far it has been working out.

We got a pretty basic model for $45. It didn't come with the bottom basket which I've read is inaccesible when the front seat is down (as it must be to accomodate an infant seat) anyway. This is inconvenient, but we take a couple of sturdy empty bags (Mike has gotten many of these at computer conferences) that we can use to carry groceries and what-have-you. This stroller, unlike newer models, does not have the attachment to lock a carseat - but ours fits quite well, and while it's not locked in, it seems quite secure in the seat. A final problem is that the sun cover is meant for a second rider sitting down - it would be nice if it was taller and would cover Michaela while she rides standing up.

But other than that it has worked great for us. Michaela is happy to ride standing up, while when I picked her up in her own stroller she always insisted in walking part of the time, now she's happy to just ride which makes trips back and forth much quicker. It's true that in that position she can't fall asleep, and generally by the time we're headed home she's really tired, but as I say to her, it's better than having to walk.

I particularly like how easy the sit n' stroll is to steer. It's much easier than all the other strollers I've had, and I can even steer it with one hand if I have to. It does feel quite light as well, obviously less so when Michaela is on it. I've had no problems getting it over the curb and up and dow the steps at home, though I do have to face these steps straight on and make sure Camila is secured to the car seat, lest she fall down at that angle.

All this said, one of my friends has a new model (they look pretty similar) which she uses as a double stroller and she doesn't like it at all. The stroller veers towards one side and she finds it very hard to steer. Even with the two seats in the vertical position, the basket is hard to access.

So obviously this is not a product that will work for everyone, I'm happy that so far it works for me.

As for the picture, that's what Mika does just as soon as Camila shows signs of starting to cry.

These are some of my favorite internet products & services, some of which I use daily. Check them out!

Skype

A free internet telephony product that really works. I use it to call my parents in LA, and my colleagues around the world. You can also use it to call phones - rather than computers -, at very low rates. If you want to call me, my username is mlacabe.

Picasa

This is a free image editor by Google. It's great in that it's very small and it takes minutes to download and install, but it lets you do simple photo editing (cropping, red-eye correction, color correction) very quickly and easily. It doesn't have the functionality of photoshop and its folder structure is a complete and total mess, but I like it quite well, in particular when used in conjuction with:

Hello

This is a tool that helps you share your pictures with other Hello users. It's also free and extremely quickly to download and install. Picture transfer is amazingly quick and you can see what your friends are looking at. My username here is margalacabe

Craigslist

I spend way too much time at the discussion groups here, but Craigslist is most useful as a place to buy and sell anything you want, find a job, a nanny or a lead or just kill some time.

Salon

The grandaddy of the internet magazines, it's also my favorite. I love the wide range of topics and viewpoints it presents. It's well worth the $35 annual subscription.

Epicurious and All Recipes.

These two websites offer thousands of recipes with user reviews. Epicurious' recipes come from cooking magazines (Bon Appetite, Gourmet and others) while All Recipes accepts submissions from everybody. I usually have better luck with epicurious recipes, but not always. They're both worth checking out.

btefnet.net

There are many torrent sites out there and they often close as quickly as they open, btefnet has been pretty stable so far. It's for episodes of TV shows only, mostly from network TV.

Amazon

I hate being so dependent on this megahuge ecommerce site, but it's the first place I go when I want to read consumer reviews of specific products. epinions is usually the second. Amazon also has good prices and lately I've been lucky with their shipping.

Yahoo Shopping

It has thousands of small stores so it's a great place where to go for comparison shopping and where to find difficult-to-find items.

Please feel free to comment with your favorites.

I no longer travel as much as I'd like, but we still manage a trip here and there. In 2003 we went to Argentina for six weeks and last year we went to Hawaii. In planning that trip, I found Trip Advisor's reviews very useful so I decided to start writing my own hotel reviews. A few months later, Mike has returned them to me edited and they're now on the website. If you're curious, you can find them at http://www.marga.org/fun/travel/hotels/

When we went to Washington State last month I made reservations for a full-size car with Budget rent-a-car. I chose them both because they were cheap and because supposedly they were located at the terminal. It was a BIG, BIG mistake. While I was getting our luggage, Mike and the two kids (3.5 yo and 7 months) were in line at the Budget counter. They only had one person there, who worked at a pace that would have embarrassed a tortoise. Then, after half an hour in line, when he was the next person in line, she closes the counter and says he has to go downstairs. When we finally get there (with two kids, a stroller, a suitcase and a couple of car seats it took us a while), there was a line of about ten people in front of the Budget counter, and again, only person working. It was almost like a Far Side version of hell.

We quickly noticed that the other car rental company counters were pretty much empty, so I held our place in line while Mike went to see if anyone else had cars. A couple of them were out of cars, but Avis not only had them, but were willing to match Budget's price. Because they didn't have a full-size car (what I'd reserved) they bumped us up to the "mini SUV" category for the same price. That ended up being a Pontiac Vibe, a.k.a. the Toyota Matrix, a car we've thought about buying.

We loved the car and we loved the service we got at Avis. Next time we have to rent, there is no question who we will go with.

The Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego has instituted a new policy forcing housekeepers to clean 30 rooms in an 8 hour period - almost twice as many as they had to clean before. The workers are protesting, it's just not possible to clean so many rooms without compromising their health. So far Hyatt remains unmoved.

It's not surprising that Hyatt will have such disregard for its workers - but you wonder why it decides to have such disregard for its guests. A housekeeper who has ten minutes to clean a room (she will have to spen precious minutes moving her cart from room to room and fetching towells and other things) will just not be able to do a good job of it. Indeed, recent reviews at Tripadvisor show that this has indeed, been the case.

One recent guest complained about toenails from a previous guest left on the edge of the bathtub (gross!), and toilet paper, kleenex and coffee packets not being refilled. Other guests have complained about dirty sheets that are never changed and filthy bedspreads.

For more information on the protest see:

Hyatt Housekeepers United - Home

One of my favorite gadgets - indeed probably my favorite gadget, is my Rocket ebook. It's the perfect way to read a long document (and just try to read a sentence on human rights issues, they are hundreds of pages long), to carry several documents with you, without the necessity of printing them out. I hate wasting trees.

Alas, I don't think they make rocket books anymore. Indeed, I don't think they make any e-book eader anymore which is a real shame. I don't know if this is because there isn't a market for ebooks - people just prefer paper - or because people rather use their palms. Or perhaps they were just too expensive.

But I think the problem might have been marketing. They marketed these books as products to read books, not documents. If they'd done the later, they would have been able to reach the business audience. It's really a great way of reading a long document.

What I like about it is that it's backlit, it charges quickly, and the battery lasts an enormous amount of time - 20 hours, I think. The font is also quite clear and easy to read. It's a bit heavy, I prefer using it lying down or holding it on a surface, otherwise I need both hands to hold it. But all in all I love it.

I'm off to read a long document now.

So I've installed the latest Movable Type - hoping I'll be able to change the look of my blogs, but I still have to get some plug-in to do that - and I realize that I can now get subcategories as well as categories. Great, just what I need. Only problem, I don't know how to use it. *sigh* It seems I /am/ going to have to look at the manual :( Probably a good idea anyway.

Mike got me a Sony reader because it was only $100. A waste of $100 if you ask me.

The screen has so little contrast that you can barely see the text, it's not back lit, so you can't read unless there is a lot of light around, and the font size on PDF files is so miniscule even someone with 20-20 vision could not read it. In other words, the thing is useless.

My ancient rocketbook is far superior. It has a much better and brighter screen (even if more pixelated, at least you can read what's on the screen), and much easier to handle buttons. The Sony reader is lighter and has a longer battery life, but my main reason for getting it was to read PDF documents, which it apparently can't do - so what's the point?

Mattel/Fisher Price has recalled a myriad of recently sold toys because they've been painted with paint containing unacceptable levels of lead (apparently there is such a thing as paint with acceptable levels of lead, imagine that!). The products - surprise, surprise - came from China. You expect to find lead in that cheap metallic jewelry sold out of machines - we've heard about it from quite a while - but in brand-name toys? You would imagine they would have better quality standards.

We owned some of the recalled toys, those to the left, and of course Camila had already chewed on one of them. Very, very sucky.

You can check if you have any of these products at http://service.mattel.com/us/recall/39054_IVR.asp?prod=

I just found out about a new search engined called cuil, started by some former google engineers. It's supposed to be better than google, of course, so I decided to take it for a test ride. It sucked. I typed in the name Julián Corres, an Argentine torturer who recently escaped from a police station. They didn't have one single hit related to him. I tried the name of various disappeared people that we feature in Proyecto Desaparecidos - there were no hits for them either. And this from a search engine that claims that has more indexed pages than google.

I tried googling family members names. Mine gave results similar to those in google - but there were only 3 hits for Michaela's - and none to pages with much relevancy.

Cuil has this "cool" feature in that along with page summaries, it provides pictures that supposedly, illustrate your search. But the pictures are pretty random. Type Mike Katz and you won't find any links to my Mike Katz' pages - but you will see a picture next to a link to a singer with his name. WTF!

Anyway, I do wish that someone would come up with a better search engine than google. I know that google has great limitations, as when I search for my name it gives me a link to an article I sent to a mailing list over a decade ago - not the most relevant of informations (cuil, btw, does the same thing). But cuil, unfortunately, is not it.

I just found out about this website, Snagfilms where you can watch full-length documentaries online. They deal mostly with progressive issues - I'm watching one now called Perversion of Justice, about a mom who was sentenced to life in prison for being involved (as in helping with the wire transfers) of a drug dealing relative. Life in prison, if you can imagine that. It's unconscionable.

Anyway, check out the site.

Something is not working right at Amazon.com. The last two orders I shipped, both for items in stock, have been taking forever to ship. Not to be delivered, mind you, but to make it out of Amazon warehouses. My first order, for a tea set and a cookbook, did not ship until 12 (TWELVE) days after I placed it. My second order, for a dvd player, also said to be in stock, is taking an estimated 7 days to ship! And of course, it could be more!

In the past, when they were having problems shipping a specific item, they'd divide the order in parts, and ship them separately. This has not happened with either of the orders I made - which makes me think the problem are not the items themselves, but their whole shipping operation.

So what's the problem? Are their workers striking? Have they laid of so many people that they cannot deal with the work they have? Are they lying when they say they have items in stock? Have they just become utterly incompetent.

I don't know, and I'm not sure that I care. All I can say is that I'm not going to be doing any shopping at Amazon, unless I have a full month to receive the items. Too bad for them, because I use it a lot.

Update I called the Amazon customer service people and talked to them as to why my shipments were so delayed. Apparently, if you chose free shipping they can take up to 5 business days to ship your order. And they count holidays (even minor ones as veterans' day) and Saturdays as business days, even though they work on those days. So, it's not that they use a slower shipping service, just that they make you pay for the free shipping by holding to your order for days before they ship it. I think this did not use to be their policy, but they really want to encourage people to spend more money now that sales have gone down. The problem for them is that this will discourage customers from shopping there.

The other thing they are no longer doing is splitting orders. In the past, if one item wasn't shipping for whatever reason, they'd mail you whatever was available. No longer - unless you specifically pay for it. Again, not a customer friendly policy.

Anyway, my conversations with the customer service people did bear fruits, and both the DVD player and the case for such player were shipped yesterday - and they should be here well before my thanksgiving trip.

For Christmas, I got Mika Scientific Explorer's Spa Science Chemistry Kit, a kit that lets you make a bunch of beauty products: oatmeal masks & soaps, bath fizzies & perfurmed salts. Mika was sort of interested and Camila enjoyed it very much, and I liked it too. Making those things is not too far from cooking, a matter of mixing things together, so I can get into it.

I decided to try other kits, so I'd have activities to do with the kids, and I bought Life of the Party Lip Balm & Lotion Kit. That wasn't as fun, as all you do is melt the lipbalm solution and then add coloring and perfume, or just add color & perfume to the pre-made lotion. We have a lot of lip balm & lotion around, and it entertained Mika for a while, but it wasn't worth the $21 price tag (though I bought it at Michael's with one of their weekly 40% off one item coupons). It just wasn't that fun.

Yesterday, Michael had a 50% off one item coupon (good only yesterday and today), so I decided to go and buy another kit. I settled on Life of the Party Soap Designs Kit because it seemed the most fun of the different soap kits they had there. This kit consists of a block of transparent soap, a block of white soap, one perfume, three colors (the box said yellow, green and red, but I actually got burgundy, red and green), a flimsy plastic mold with 4 shapes (rectangular, square, circle and rectangle) and 4 soap cutters (big heart, small heart, leaf and flower). These are made of metal, and are pretty thick and sharp - also small enough to fit within small to standard size soap bars. In other words, they are smaller than the cookie cutters you may have at home.

What you do is melt the transparent soap, add color & perfume, let it set, cut with the cookie cutters. Place the cut figures on the mold, then melt some white soap and pour it on the mold with the figures. Then you let it set.

I like that there are a few steps on making the soap - it feels like you are really making it - and you get to express some of your creativity in decorating the soap (though we followed the pictures from the box, not too successfully). So all in all this was a good kit and a good value at $12 after tax & the coupon.

I wonder if I could convince Mike to go back to Michael's and get another kit today (with another 50% off coupon). I'm thinking of this one: Cool Kids Soap Kit

Even though it's not comestics, I'm also thinking of getting Scientific Explorer's Mind Blowing Science Kit for Young Scientists, because they have it at Michael's and I have the coupon.

Well, I did end up going to Michael's yesterday afternoon and buying the Cool Kids Soap Kit. At a about $10, I couldn't resist. (Note that the kit is priced about $20 - but there are usually 40% off coupons on Michael's ads, so you can get them for about $12, cheaper than online and no need to pay for shipping).

The kit comes with a block of transparent soap, a block of white soap, a small bottle of scent (Mika doesn't really like it), three dies (blue, red & yellow), one plastic mold for 6 soaps (the ones pictured on the box), a loaf of daisy soaps and a loaf mold so you can surround those daisies with clear soap and then cut it into slices.

What the kit DOES NOT CONTAIN is any type of clear instructions. There is one badly photocopied page, that tells you how to melt the soap and how to make the daisy loaf. There are no real instructions on how to make the soap bars, however. Basically what it says is to melt the soap, add scent & color and pour into the mold - but that will not leave you with the two color soaps the box depicts. To do that, melt 2 squares of soap (either white or transparent), it takes about 10-15 seconds in the microwave. Add a couple of drops of scent and color, and then *very carefully* pour into the recess of the mold where the protruding figure is. If you spill some outside the figure, let it harden a little and then carefully cut the excess with the side of a teaspoon. Spray a little bit of rubbing alcohol over the figure (to prevent air pockets and to help it adhere to the rest of the soap). Once the figure has hardened, then melt 5 squares of soap, scent and color it, and pour it into the mold on top of the figure. Wait about 30' for the soap to harden before taken it out. To do so, press on the mold evenly and carefully.
This is all based on the instructions for the Life of the Party Soap Designs Kit that I bought before - and that worked pretty well for the soap I made yesterday.

What I don't know is how to make the transparent soap be dual color as the box shows some of the soap bars being. Perhaps you add the coloring to the soap solution, but don't mix it in? I may try it in a future soap.

In any case, Mika and I had fun making two bars of soap this morning. We'll unmold them and take pictures of them when she comes home from school. The only problem is that it doesn't take long to make a bar of soap, so it's not an activity we can do for a long period of time. Of course, if it was too long, she'd get bored as well. So I need to find some activities that last longer but not too long. Any suggestions?

I got Highlights High Five magazine for my 4-year old as a Christmas present (I also got Highlights magazine for my 7-year old, but she hasn't shown any interest in it). She loves it! As soon as it arrives we have to do the different activities: read the stories, find the hidden items, do the matching-game, etc. The only problem is that we go through the magazine fairly quickly - that said, we still haven't done any of the crafts.

It's nice to have one more thing to do with my little girl. If you only my other little girl was interested in *something* we could do together (she already grew tired of the soap making & lotion making).

When I have a reason to spend so much $$

Sababa / Front Porch Bookshelf Valley of the Pharaohs

Scientific Explorer is a company that makes science and cosmetic kids aimed to children. I have so far bought 3 of their kits: the Spa Science Chemistry Kit, the Perfumery kit and the Mind Blowing Science Kit for Young Scientists. I've been all in all happy with the kits, though a little bit concerned that they are expensive for what they offer - in particular because so many of the ingredients they come with are things you have at home anyway. For example the Spa Science kit comes with oatmeal and baking soda. That said, some of the ingredients they come with (e.g. the plastic vials in Perfumery or the red cabbage juice powder in Mind Blowing Science) are not so easy to otherwise obtain - or you would have to buy them in such large quantities that it'd end up being more expensive.

My gripe with Scientific Explorer is that while the contents of each kit is printed on the back of the box, you can't find it anywhere else. For example, I was thinking of making sugar polish with the girls - I think Mika might actually like that - but all the recipes I've found online (e.g. these ones) require the purchase of different oils. I'm sure that when I added up the price of each one, the end result would be quite expensive. So I'm thinking I could get Scientific Explorer's Sugar Polish for Your Body Make It Yourself Spa Kit, but I'd like to know what comes with the kit. Does it contain small portions of all those oils? Or does it just include sugar and some scent/essential oil? I'm worried because while the recipes I've found for salt rubs on the internet (e.g. these ones) also contain a number of oils, the recipes for salt rubs in the Spa kit consisted basically of mixing coarse salt with an essential oil. I don't need a kit (in particular a $20 kit) to do that.

Some of the kits, like the Spa Science and Perfumery ones, are available at local stores like Target - so I can go and look at the boxes. But others, such as the Sugar Polish one mentioned above, are only available online. And while it's sold by tons of places - none of them have a list of the contents.

So, in my next post I will post a list of the ingredients in the Spa Science kit (the ingredients in the perfumery kit are mentioned in my review of the kit).

I wrote about the Scientific Explorer's Spa Science Chemistry Kit before, but in this post I wanted to list the contents as they are so difficult to find anywhere else online.

They are:

4 oz baking soda
5 oz oats
10.5 oz sea salt
1 oz citric acid
.5 oz lavender essential oil
.5 oz peppermint essential oil
.5 oz dried roses
1 very small glycerin soap bar
1 small muslin bag
2 pipettes
2 plastic cups
1 test tube and cap

And, of course, the instructions.

Other than the instructions you pretty much can find everything you need to make the recipes at home, and indeed, for many of the recipes, you will need to use additional ingredients from home.

All that said, essential oils are quite expensive ($10-$20 oz), so if you consider that, the kit is not a bad deal.

We just came back from the 99 cents only store in Hayward. As usual, we spent too much money on crap - though I got some sunflower oil and 2 lbs epsom salts for making cosmetics. But we also found Little Pet Shop pets (including this one) for, of course, 99c. Another good bargain was the Baby Alive Diaper Bag with Diaper, Bottle, and Bib and another set (I think it was a towel or bathrobe), for, once again, 99 cents. Those things cost $10-20, so that's a huge bargain.

Afterwards, at McFrugal's, I got a 15 pc travel container set for $3 - most of the pieces are small round jars, better for lip balm than lotion, but at that price I can't complain. Alas, I could only find one bag.

As you know, I've been really into soap-making with the girls lately. I've been also wanting to branch out into other "beauty" products, and I already made a foot and a face scrub. I also bought some Epsom salts (99c at the 99c only store) to make bath salts. But my next project is to make lotions. Mika and I already made some using lotion making kit, but in that case it only consisted of mixing a pre-made lotion base with color and fragrance - not too exciting.

Now I got a lotion making kit from Bran Berry Soap Making supplies, so I will try the real deal. The kit comes with:

8 oz. Sweet Almond Oil 8 oz. Avocado Oil 8 oz. Shea Butter 1 oz. Phenonip 1 lb. Stearic Acid 1 lb. Emulsifying Wax or Ceteryl Alcohol 12 - 4 oz. Clear Reverse Tapered Ovals w/White Caps 1 oz. Lavender 40/42 Essential Oil 1 oz. Cucumber Melon Fragrance Oil Lotion Making Booklet

After buying it, I thought I'd have been better off just buying the individual ingredients in larger quantities, so I could make products other than lotion, but c'est la vie. This kit will make 48 oz of lotion - which is not that much in comparison to another kit I was thinking of buying - but I can't imagine having a need for more. Indeed, I have so many store-bought (by my mother) lotions at home, that I don't really have a personal need to make my lotion myself. But I'm hoping it'll be fun for the girls :-) Now, thinking back, that other kit was probably a better value. Oh well.

Anyway, what I actually wanted to say on this post was that Branble Berry was a good company to buy from. Everything came well packaged, the recipe booklet came with general as well as specific lotion-making instructions, and, most importantly of all, the package arrived 5 days (which included a weekend), after I'd ordered it. I did pay over $11 in shipping - but the package was almost 8lbs.

I'd probably buy from them again - though this hobby is getting expensive (I bought the kit as a birthday present to myself), so I don't anticipate doing it soon.

Update. I was wrong when I said the Bramble Berry kit would only make 48oz of lotion. I calculated that based on the fact that the kit came with 12 4-oz bottles - I thought that there would be as much lotion as bottles. Well, I was wrong. I don't know exactly how much lotion you can make with this kit, but it's a LOT. The real problem is getting cheap bottles/jars where to put all the lotion you can make - and finding uses for said lotion.

I'll also report that I did order more stuff from Bramble Berry (hey, you only turn 40 once), and once again it arrived in less than a week from when I ordered it. The shipping charges are high - but I'm very happy with them.

My sister got us two sets of Creativity for Kids Make Your Own Layered Lotions, which she found at target for around $4 (the regular price was $15). I can't imagine paying anywhere near regular price for the kit, given that at most, it'll give your kids 15 minutes of fun.

Basically the kit comes with 4 canisters of colored, scented shimmering hand lotion (note, do not use on your face), which you put in one of two heart-shaped bottles in whichever order/pattern you want. There are also two pieces of ribbon to tie around the bottle.

Even though the concept is so easy, the lotion likes to stick to the sides of the bottle when you push it in, so you can't really get the nice layered look that you see on the bottle. But I don't think the kids care much. In all, they (7 and 4 yo girls) seem to enjoy making the layered lotions. And for $4 each set, I'm not sorry we bought them.

When I have to fly somewhere, usually the first place that I check for flights is Expedia. I'm not sure why, perhaps because it was the first travel site out there. But I usually end up buying from Travelocity, but the site is more annoying to use, as it doesn't give you full details about the flight from the beginning. Today it was particularly annoying as I found two good itineraries I was ready to buy - and both changed price (by several hundreds of dollars) while I was booking them.

So the moral of the story is that you have to check all three sites (and perhaps others?) before buying plane tickets.

It really couldn't be slower.

It has happened. Analog TV is no more - now, if you want to watch TV, you need to buy a digital TV, have cable or use a converter box with your regular TV. Being poor and cheap, the latter was really the only alternative we considered.

We got the Channel Master CM-7000 Digital to Analog TV Converter Box at Amazon.com with a government coupon. I got it because it was the best rated converter - and while we've had it for months, Mike only installed it Saturday, when regular TV stopped working. So far, it's worked very well. Mike didn't have much trouble installing it, and the reception it gets is better than what we had before with the regular antenna. The one annoying part is that you have to now use its remote to change channels (the TV has to be set at channel 4), but that remote doesn't work with the sound, so we still have to use the regular remote for the sound. It also doesn't use the whole surface of the TV screen to display the image - basically there is a 2" black border around the TV program now, I don't know if there is something that can be done about that.

But so far, I'm relatively happy. We still have another converter (which Mike bought despite the fact it got HORRIBLE reviews), that we need to install in one of the other TVs. Alas, we're still going to end up one-TV short. It's not a big deal, but I like having the TV on when I'm cleaning the bedroom or the kitchen.

A couple of months ago, Grocery Outlet opened a branch in San Leandro, just across the street from me. I've blogged about it before, in my food blog, but I'm writing about it here because the store sells non-food products as well. As you could expect, it sells beauty products. What has surprised me is the number of brand-name products it sells. And not just your regular, supermarket brand-name products, but the more exclusive, expensive ones. And of course, they are sold at considerably lower prices than at the supermarket/drug-store. And indeed, some of this stuff you can't even get at regular stores. I'm impressed.

For the last few days I've been looking for biodegradable sunscreen to use in Mexico - the regular stuff is bad for the coral reefs. I couldn't find it at Safeway, Longs or Target - but they have it, along with other natural sunscreen and regular lotions, at Grocery Outlet. The sunscreens they have are from Alba Botanica, and they are all-natural without chemicals. Pretty cool. I forgot how much they were, but less than $3. They had a few varieties. They also have Aveeno sunscreen, for $5 for 4 oz - I think it was $9 at Target. I'm not sure that this one is biodegradable, however. I also saw some Jason Tea Tree Scalp Normalizing Shampoo, which sells at Target for about $10, for about $4. But you can't count on them having a specific product, they often get just one shipment of a product, and when it's gone, it's gone. But chances are, they will replace it with yet another high-end product.

As for food, they sell Harris Ranch beef, but only Tyson chicken, which I won't buy because of their history of torturing chickens. I haven't seen Twinnings tea yet :-(, but they have/had Good Earth - which you can accompany with some Walkers Stem Ginger and Lemon Cookies ($1.50!).

It doesn't pay to go to Grocery Outlet to buy a specific product, it may very well not be there, but I think it's worth it to browse there once in a while to see if something cool has come. Just make sure to grab it immediately, as it won't be there on your next visit.

Grocery Outlet
2179 E 14th St
San Leandro
(510) 895-3605

I'm generally a fan of Amazon: they have good prices, good customer service, free shipping in orders of $25 or more and products that arrive fairly quickly (though there are exceptions). But I'm not thrilled about their pricing and search policy. While they often have the lowest prices, they often offer a same product in multiple pages (their own and those of its associated businesses), often at wildly varied prices, but you cannot always find the product with the cheapest price by searching for it in Amazon's search engine.

For example, do a search for the "connair quick gem" (which I just got Mika) and the only search result you will get is this one, from an associate that sells the product for $18 + $5.20 shipping. But if you search for "quick gem jeweler" you will arrive to this page which sells directly for Amazon for $8 + free shipping (in orders over $25). Yes, the first one is a misspelling of the company maker - but if it could find the first product, why not the second?

My other concern is that Amazon's prices change wildly, so you have to be pretty attentive and check multiple times to see that you get the best deal. And finally, it's often difficult to find very cheap products (let's say, $5 and under) that qualify for free shipping, often what you need to get your order to $25 to get such free shipping.

But despite all that I continue buying from Amazon - most often because I can't find the same product cheaper somewhere else.

Chances are you are not going to buy a Lakeshore Color Mixing Science
Experiment set - it's been discontinued. But as of a few months ago it
was still available at outlet stores, where we had the misfortune of
buying one. It was on sale, $12 from $20 original price, but it's not
worth more than a couple of dollars at the most. It's really the most
stupid kit I have ever found.

Basically it contains 3 little pitchers that you use to pour colored
water into a plastic container. The kit comes with bath color tablets
which you first have to dissolve in two cups of water. The tablets are
supposed to be primary colors: blue, yellow and red - but the red tablet
actually makes pink water. As the colored waters mix with each other,
you are supposed to get secondary colors: green, purple and orange - and
while you do get green and purple, apparently pink and yellow make red,
not orange. Let's talk about confusing a 4 year old!

On the plus size my 4 year old had fun mixing in the colors, though I
don't think she learned much from it. It's no wonder they've
discontinued it - but this experience should make me (and you) think
twice before buying Lakeshore products.

I bought the Horton Hears a Who! - You to the Rescue! board game last Christmas. It was on sale for less than $10 and got good reviews. Still, for one reason or another we hadn't played it until now. Mika and Mike took it out of the box a few days ago, and then today Mika and I played it. Basically, what you do is place 6 colored balls that have velcro around the house. Then you toss the dice and if you land on a certain square (circle) you have to put on a head dress that looks like an elephant, with velcro on the end of the trunk, and run, hop, crawl, etc. to the ball of the specified color and pick it up with your head dress within a given time period. Picking up the balls is quite easy, so to make the game "funner" you probably have to be creative as to where you put the balls (we haven't yet).

We haven't played the game with Camila yet, but I anticipate that she may have less fun than Mika. At 4 1/2 years old she's probably not as deft as her sister, and gets frustrated easily if she can't do something well (in that she is like her sister). Still, we will try :-)

I didn't grow up in the US, so "shrinky dinks" were not part of my childhood. Indeed, until people started mentioning them as a possible "craft" for my kids, I didn't know anything at all about them. Everyone whom I talked to about them thought they were great for kids, so I got a box of Shrinky Dinks Cool Gear by Faber and Castell.

I didn't bother to look at what came in the box, but it was rather disappointing: 5 sheets of shrinky dinks (about 30 images, I think), 8 small color pencils, two keyrings, one super-cheapy chain, one plastic cord and 8 shells. There was also a small hole puncher and some self-sticking magnets. So basically you can make 4 "gear" type of items, a bunch of magnets and have a few shrinky dinks left over. That seems quite little for $15. After doing some more looking around in Amazon (after I ordered :-( ) I found some better deals, like Shrinky Dinks Jewelry by Alex, which include more images and more play items - and is substantially cheaper. Well, live and learn.

One other thing to keep in mind when ordering this set is that the drawings are the type that would be likely to appeal to boys more than to girls (race cars, sports equipment, etc.). Still, my girls did not seem to notice, though they did chose to color the more gender-neutral images first.

As for the craft itself, it's a good way to spend a few minutes - coloring the picture, baking them, waiting for them to cool down and then affixing them to something. But there isn't that much entertainment value for the price - the kids were amused at seeing the large pictures turn into such little things, but they probably enjoyed the coloring most of all. In all, it just was not worth the $15 or so that I paid for the kit :-(

One toy that was worth its price was Sculpey clay. We got the Sculpey III Multipack - Bright Ideas, which comes with 10 different colors of clay, very bright colors. It also retails for about $15, but we bought it at Joann with a 50% off coupon. Still, given how much fun my kids had with it, it would have been worth the full price.

Basically, sculpey is clay - as in playdough type clay. It starts off a little hard, but after you roll it and handle it a bit, it becomes as plyable as play dough. The advantage is that you can also bake it and harden it - so you can make everything from a bead to a sculpture out of it. Of course, what you end up with is mostly linked to your particular sculptural talent - which doesn't run very high in my family. But the important part is that the kids had a great time playing with the dough and expressing their creativity.

Now, if it was up to me I would have chosen more muted colors, but of course, it's for the kids and they like stuff that's bright. Still, they followed my lead and made beads and pendants (and some figurines), which we'll turn into necklaces tomorrow and thus extend the fun :-)

I got Alex Toys Paint Ice Beads and Jingle Jewelry Kit, after the kids and I made a couple of necklaces with the Girlfitti Magna Style Jewelry Kit which my mother got for the girls. They enjoyed that kit, so I thought they would like these as well.

And indeed, they did. They loved painting the "ice" (a.k.a. glass) beads in the first kit, and they loved the idea of jingle jewelry in the second kit. But... they weren't too big on making the jewelry itself. The beads that come with the kits are very small, and the possibilities for creativity, at least with the ice set, are limited. So they haven't gone beyond painting beads on that set.

We fared even worse with the Jingle Jewelry Kit. The first problem was that the kit didn't have any written instructions as to how to make the jewelry, just drawings of the steps. Alas, if you've never made jewelry before the steps could seem puzzling. But beyond that, using the jingles means having to knot the cord in precise places before and after putting specific beads - not an easy endeavor for me, much less for two little girls who barely know how to tie knots. Let's just say that the enthusiasm for the kits did not last very long.

In all, now that I have gotten more beads, those two kits seem rather expensive for what they are (but that's true of all of Alex's kits). Still, the kids liked painting those beads so much that I'll try to find some transparent beads for them to paint.

I haven't been "beading" for very long, but soon after I bought our first jewelery kits I lost the beading needles that came with them. It's quite hard to put small beads into thread without a beading needle, so I hurried to buy some more.

There were several choices at Michaels, a craft chain store near us, and some how I lucked out and got the Beadalon Collapsible Eye Needles. I LOVE them. So far, I've pretty much been able to bead anything I've wanted using them. The eyes collapse, so it mostly doesn't matter how small the hole in the bead is (but be weary and don't try to force it, I did get a needle to break while trying to pass it through too small a hole).

There are a couple of minuses, however. For one, they're expensive!, up to $4 for a 4-pack. For the other, they are VERY easy to lose. I already lost 3 of the 4 that came in my last package. They are so thin that it's almost impossible to see them once they fall into the floor.

Anyway, I'm sold by them.

I've ordered a bunch of findings (as the metal parts that hold jewelry together are called) through e-bay, but most of them are coming from China, so it'll be a while before I get them. Meanwhile I was in need of more clasps, fishhooks (for earrings), crimp beads and so forth. I figured buying a findings set would be the cheapest option - specially given the 40% off coupon always available at Michaels. Well, I was wrong. The Precious Accents collection is soooo bad that I'd have been better off just waiting.

The collection, even with the coupon, is not particularly cheap - almost $7 after tax. It comes with a little of everything, emphasis on the little. But what is annoying is just how cheap all the findings are, made from such weak metal. The clasps are hard to open (and I'm sure they'll quickly break), the hoops are too small and the pins very fragile. I hope the stuff I get from China is better :-)

Along with beads, I've been buying some pendants on e-bay. Many of the cheaper ones are described as "Murano Lampwork Glass". Apparently Murano glass is an exquisitely dedicated glass from the Venetian island of Murano. I've never seen a real sample myself, so I have no idea what it looks like. I do know that the real stuff sells for quite a lot of money. For example, this one sells for $43 at Amazon.

The ones on e-bay sell for much less and come from China. Though the description of the items might suggest they come from Murano, I think it's pretty evident given the price and location of the sellers, that the pendants are made of Murano style glass.

I've bought a few of these and I'm really impressed by how beautiful they are. The colors are very vibrant and the designs quite nice. I'm particularly impressed by a blue coil-shaped one which I'm sure I'll wear frequently. The picture to the left, which I took, just cannot do justice to the beautiful coloring.

I'm also planning to give some of these as presents (I'm thinking of giving one to my mail carrier who has brought a lot of little brown envelopes to my house in the last few weeks - I hope she doesn't read my blog ;-)) and I'll probably buy a couple of more for myself now that I know how pretty they are.

All these said, a word of caution. Not all the sellers on e-bay are trustworthy (I've bought mine from athena_lovly, they took about 20 days to arrive), but you can also buy the pendants on Amazon and the pendants are quite large and heavy, too big for a child. And indeed, coming from China you never know if there is lead in the glass, so I'm keeping my kids away form them, just in case.

I've been feeding my beading obsession by buying most of my beads from e-bay. One of the things I've gotten into is getting lots of mixed beads, which sell by the pound (or fraction thereof). I've gotten a couple on e-bay from beaddevotion which had perfect beads, some quite beautiful. But they are not cheap.

Amazon, meanwhile, offers Mr. Kitty's Big Bead Bonanza, a 1/2 lb of mixed-material beads. I've already gotten 2lbs of these beads, and they are a mixed bag (literally). About half the beads are quite good. I like the fact that they have quite a few stone ones and a variety of sizes. Another half has problems, misplaced or absent holes, are made of plastic, or are uneven. Still, most of them are usable.

As the case is often with Amazon, the prices for the bead mix change wildly. I paid $3.50 (+shipping) for the first set I bought, and $2.50 for the following 3 sets. At that last price, the sets were a bargain. Right now, however, the same set is selling for $4.50 + shipping. I definitely wouldn't buy it at that price.

I have LOTS of beads to play with for the time being, but in case my obsession continues, I hope they'll lower the price again before I run out.

12/28/09 Update

Mr. Kitty's Big Bead Bonanza is selling for $2.17 right now at Amazon (+ $1.75 shipping). That's the lowest price it's been in a couple of months. What's interesting is that I've been following the price of this item pretty much every day for the last 2 months, and practically every day it has a new price - usually within a few cents of the price before. I really don't understand why they'd bother to change the price so often.

Later the same day: Well, that was short lived - it's a few hours later and they're now at $4.72.

My whole (now mostly gone) obsession with making beauty products at home, started last Christmas when I got Michaela a Scientific Explorer's Spa Science Chemistry Kit. Mika sort of liked it, but I thought the concept of making cosmetics at home was pretty cool. I have to admit that there wasn't much in the way of "science" to this kit - beyond learning about the interactions of baking soda and citric acid in making bath bombs - but I was happy that at least there was the attempt to make the kit seem scientific.

Well, it seems that Elmer's, the company which manufactures the kits under its division Scientific Explorer, thinks that attempt may be turning off some: it is now marketing the same kit under the name Totally Glamorous Spa Kit - carefully omitting the word "science". Other than that, and the fact that "Spa Science" comes under the brand "Scientific Explorer" while "Spa Kit" comes under the brand "Elmer's", the packaging is identical.

You can buy "Spa Science" at Amazon, Target and Barnes & Noble. "Glamorous Spa Kit" is available at Walmart and Toys R Us. Does this say something about the demographics of who shops in those stores and how marketers believe they should approach different demographics?

I don't know for sure, but it seems to me that Elmer is cynically assuming that some people (poorer people?) will be turned off by a kit if the word "Science" is in it, if there is even the possibility that their daughters (because this is a set which is marketed towards girls and will mostly appeal to girls) will learn something from it. That's pretty sad - as is the possibility that they might be right.

Update

I wrote to costumer service at Elmer's with this concern and this is the response I got:

"The reason that Spa Science is marketed under Scientific Explorer and
Totally Glamorous Spa Kit under the Elmer's name is not related to whether
buyers at one chain will purchase a science kit while those at another will
not. Instead, it goes back to an old arrangement prior to Elmer's purchase
of Scientific Explorer, whereby certain stores carried the Elmer's brand and
others, the Scientific Explorer brand. That has since changed and we will be
transitioning away from the Elmer's brand altogether for future science
products."

It's good to know.

I'm off beading (finally!) and in the look for other things that I can do with the girls. It occurred to me that we could decorate their jeans, bags and other items with appliques. I'd already tried some iron-on ones from the craft store and e-bay before with mixed results, and I thought that the sew in kind may be nicer and more successful. Of course, that was before I realized that Michaela does not like to sew (does she like doing anything?).

Anyway, I bought these appliques (supposedly 150 pieces, I haven't counted them yet) in e-bay from a seller (ohmymini) in China. I received them today and they are lovely - much nicer than I expected. So much so that now I feel bad "wasting them" on whatever I end up using them for. Given that neither Camila and I can't sew, chances are that we'll ruin them on whatever we sew them to. Oh well!

This year we are not only making all of our Xmas presents ourselves, we are also making our own cards, an activity that the kids had enjoyed quite a bit. I've bought a couple of "make your own card kits" and one has worked definitely better than the other one, so I thought I'd write about them.

I first got the Make Your Own Holiday Cards ($9) kit from Amazon.com. The kit comes with 10 blank cards and a collection of punch outs in random shapes, that you can use to create holiday scenes. Of course, you have to be creative to figure out how to turn the shapes into images, and I was disappointed that there were very few samples provided. The kids had some fun doing it, but the results weren't fantastic. Plus I felt somewhat ripped off as you could achieve the same results for $2 by buying a package of blank cards and a pad of colored construction paper from the dollar store - just cut random shapes from the paper and look at the product picture for inspiration.

I was much happier with the Cool Christmas Card Sticker Scenes set from Oriental Trading. For one, they don't seem to be cancer-producing :-) (see previous post for reference), but for another the 12 blank cards come with TONS of stickers which you can put together to make many, many scenes. And the results look nicer than with the other kit. There are more stickers than you can use with the 12 cards, so you can use the rest with cards from the dollar tree.

The one thing that I wish I'd gotten are stickers/cut-outs with Holiday phrases to put inside the cards. Mika has written some very original holiday wishes/poems in some, but her handwriting is not the neatest. Still, we had fun :-)

My friend Desiree gave Mika a Color In Tattoo Party kit by Creativity for Kids, for Xmas - and Mika couldn't be happier. The kit allows you to color-in 40 temporary tattoos - the type that children love to put on. The tattoos come with 4 markers, so your color choices are limited, but they come in a nice variety of designs. Mika particularly liked the long tattoos that can be used as bracelets. We haven't tried putting one on yet, so we don't really know how they work out. The little tattoos are easy to put on, however. How they look depends on how good your kids are at coloring within the lines.

Anyway, it was a very successful gift - my only issue is that there are relatively few stickers for the cost.

--
As an update, as noted in the one review of this product on Amazon.com, the tattoos are somewhat long lasting, and difficult to remove with just soap and water (which makes sense, as it means you can still wash your hands without losing your tattoo). They come out quite easily if you use a somewhat abrasive towel and some rubbing alcohol. But they do last otherwise, my daughter kept one in her face for a whole week.

I have been using Facebook quite a bit in the last year or so (it's simple enough to have a window open with my facebook page), but I haven't really gotten into twitter, though I have personal account and one for Derechos, the organization I run. To make things easier I wanted to be able to get my Facebook status to be automatically twitted out. That way I don't have to tweet it as well. But doing so proved MUCH more difficult than I expected. The problem is that Facebook has now hidden your status RSS (as well as your link rss) and without it, it isn't really possible to integrate it with twitter. The only way I've found out to do this integration is by a "hack" that involves creating a second account. This is how you do it:

- Create a new account on facebook.

- Friend yourself (and only yourself) from that account.

- While signed-in to your new account, go to http://www.facebook.com/posted.php

- On the right hand margin, look for "Subscribe to Links". Underneath that you will find a link that says: "My Friend's Links" - right click on it and copy the link. This will give you the RSS link to the links you post from your main account (the one you friended from the one you are currently using).

- Post the url (it'll look something like this: http://www.facebook.com/feeds/share_friends_posts.php?id=100000716076162&key=2f5385ddb9&format=rss20) to a word processor.

If you would like your links to be twitted, keep this url.

If you'd like your status to be twitted replace "share_friends_posts.php" with "friends_status.php" so that you end up with a url that looks like this:

"http://www.facebook.com/feeds/friends_status.php?id=100000716076162&key=2f5385ddb9&format=rss20"

- Now that you have an RSS feed for your links and/or status, go to http://twitterfeed.com/ and create an account. Follow the instructions, entering the facebook urls for the feed that you want to send directly to twitter. Note that in the second step you will have to select "twitter" as the place you want your status/links to go to. You will also have to authenticate your twitter account with your e-mail address and password, so that twitterfeed can connect to it.

And that's it. This hack works now (January 2010) and I hope it continues working - but Facebook likes to be sneaky and disable access to RSS feeds, so I can't guarantee it'll work forever.

I'm not a big make-up user, but once in a while I like to prim out. Unfortunately, every time I buy make up my kids get a hold of it, so I don't have it when I "need" it. That was the case yesterday, when I was going out with friends, and decided to make up my face pretty much at the last minute. Without time to go to the drugstore (I'd never buy make up at a department store, I could never pay those prices), my only choice was Grocery Outlet - as it's just across the street from my house. It actually worked very well for me, but they have a dismal selection of make up, so I wouldn't recommend it for anyone looking for something in particular. What they have, however, is both good quality and quite cheap.

I got some Almay Hydracolor Lipstick, which I liked quite a bit. It was very smooth to apply and had just the right amount of sheen for my lips. It also survived the meal. The "rose" color was probably a little bit light for me, but I never know what color to buy. They had about five or six different choices at GO. The lipstick was $2 - but apparently it is (was?) also available at the Dollar Tree for half as much. If I see it there, I'd probably get a couple more colors.

A better bargain was a kit consisting of Physicians Formula Mineral Wear Bronzing Talc-Free Veil and Physicians Formula Mineral Wear Lip Sheen. Separately they'd have cost about $12 online, while the kit was just $4 at GO. Alas, I'm not sure what I'd use the lip sheen for, so perhaps it wasn't such a good bargain after all :-) I did like the "bronzing veil", whatever that means, however. The fine powder worked well to conceal the redness on my face and I think merged well with my skin tone. Alas, they only had one color at GO, light tan - which worked well with my fairly light skin.

The color choices for brand-name eye make up were also limited. I got a kit consisting of Organic Wear Duo Eye Shadow and eyeliner for $4. The products sold separately online (I couldn't find the kit) would have been $16. Alas, they only had the "brown eye kit" (which worked well for me, as I have brown eyes). I also liked these products quite a bit. The eyeliner provided good coverage and was easy to apply. So was the eyeshadow, though it was a bit light in color - wouldn't work for a dramatic look. My only complain is that the kit didn't come with an applicator - as I don't wear make up, I didn't really have any at home (but I found one from Mika's make up kit). I should probably buy my own.

Anyway, after all is said and done - you can find quality make up products at GO, but there is very little selection.

I bought the Style Six Color Effects Airbrush for Mika (my 8yo) for Xmas. I wanted to branch out a little from silk screening and I thought she would enjoy this different way of decorating t-shirts. Well, she did, but the product itself was a total failure.

This kit consists of four airbrush markers, a few stencils and a machine which blows air - you put the markers on it and supposedly use it to spray the paint onto whatever fabric surface you want. Alas, the machine doesn't work at all. It's pretty much impossible to make any paint come out of the markers by using it - it just doesn't blow enough air. Now, the markers work quite well if you put them in your mouth and blow through them - and that Mika enjoyed during very much - but it's ridiculous to pay $24 for 4 miserly markers and a few cheapy stencils. The markers don't last very long either - they were enough to make about 3 (well covered) shirts.

To add insult to injury the refill is super expensive (about $19 after shipping for 3 markers) and not easy to find.

So, heed my advise and do not buy this product.

I got the Exploring Ancient Egypt Fun Kit for Mika's birthday party, and while I haven't used it yet, I'm pretty happy with the purchase. The kit is a very good value. It comes with two coloring books (King Tut Coloring Book, 32 pages and Life in Ancient Egypt Coloring Book, 48 pages). The books have very complex drawings, with a lot of detail, which may be too challenging for kids aged like mine (5 and 8) - but I think would be great for older kids and adults who like to color. Each scene has an explanation underneath it. Each book retails for $4 - so it'd be $8 for both of them.

The kit also comes with 3 sticker booklets (Shiny King Tut Treasure Stickers, about 10 stickers, King Tut: With 44 Stickers, which is actually a "dress King Tut" set and Egyptian Life Stickers, which I think also has 10 stickers), one booklet of stencils
(about 10) and one of tattoos
(id). Each of these booklets is a little bit smaller than 4" x 6". They cost $1.50 each - so just the coloring books and the booklets would be $14 together - the kit is $11.50 by itself.

The kit also comes with three colorful Egyptian masks: Nefertiti, Tutankhamon and some animal, a small poster of Tuthankamon and 4 stained glass coloring sheets.

So in all, if you want all this stuff, it's a good deal. The jury is still out on how good the stickers, tattoos and stencils are.

Today I found the Elmer/Scientific Explorers' Magnificent Manicure Kit at Thriftown for $2. New it retails for $17 at Amazon. I had been curious about the kit before, mostly because all in all I've enjoyed other Scientific Explorer kits (Spa Science, Perfumery and its chemistry kits). But I didn't buy it because in my experience these kits are waaaaay overpriced. They usually contain mostly the type of ingredients you have at home, plus a couple of small samples of stuff that would be a bit harder to come by. But for that you spend close to $20!

This is definitely the case with the Manicure kit. The kit comes with a 3.4oz bottle of lotion base, 4oz bottle of bath salts (aka sodium chloride or table salt), 1.2 oz bottle of crystal mud (aka sodium polyacrylate), 1ml of sodium melon fragrance, 1 ml green dye, 2 foam toe separators, a small plastic soaking tray, a measuring spoon, a mixing spoon, a small pipette, a toy nail buffer (I can't imagine it'll be good for anything) and a foot-shaped pumice stone. There is also an activity guide, which is really what you buy the kit for. My $2 kit did not have the lotion, fragrance, dye or mixing spoon - not a big deal as I have all those things at home. But indeed, I have everything the kit comes with save for the "crystal mud" (and the guide) at home.

My kids enjoyed playing with the "crystal mud" so much, that for me it was a good purchase. But the kit is definitely not worth $20, IMHO.

There isn't very much science to the kit, though the crystal mud section is used to help kids learn about saturation, which was a concept Mika didn't know before. There is also a few "fun facts" in the booklet with helpful information, though Mika was less than interested in this :-(

--

Here are the activities included in the activity guide.

- Making gel with the "crystal mud". The crystal mud is a polymer which starts as granules which can absorb 300 times their weigh in liquid. They basically become a gel when saturated, and you can use them to soak your hands for relaxation purposes. It doesn't do anything for your skin/nails, though. But Mika LOVED making and playing with the stuff and holding it in her hands.

-Adding salt to the gel, supposedly to help rub off death skin from your hands. However, this part irritated Mika's skin.

-Mixing the lotion base with color and fragrance and rubbing it in her skin. We skipped this part, though we've done it before with a previous kit and the lotion we make ourselves, and just used regular lotion.

-Buffing and shining your nails with the included nail buffer.

-Painting your nails with the non-included nail polish.

Then you do a pedicure

-Soak your feet in the gel

-Rubbing your feet with the included pumice stone

-Applying lotion to your feet

-Painting your toe nails using the included toe separators and your own nail polish.

I want to introduce my readers to my friend Alpana Aras-King who runs Storybox Art in the San Francisco Bay Area. Alpana is an amazing photographer, and has taken some of the most beautiful family/children pictures I've ever seen. Alpana is a trained photographer, and her pictures do not just show her artistic vision but her sense of fun and soul. Check out her website.

We just returned from another trip to the flea market, though this one didn't turn out as well as other ones.

I bought a Junior Scientist Kit. It retails for $24 + shipping at an Amazon store, and I paid $3. Most of the kit seems to be there, BUT, and this is key, it's missing the instructions (which I didn't notice when I bought it). I found them online but for $5 - but I bought them nonetheless. Still, I'm pissed.

I also got a Girl Gourmet Cupcake Maker (retails for $20, got it for $4). In this one I didn't realize it was missing quite a few things ( spoon, water dropper, mixer bowl, cupcake papers, 2 mixes, all four frosting mixes and 1 shortcut card). I would probably not have bought it, but it's my fault for not having looked at it more closely. It does get pretty bad reviews on Amazon, mostly for the taste/texture of the cupcakes and specially the frosting (which I don't have anyway). But I found a posting online about using store-bought cake mix. The idea is to make the batter as usual, pour it in the cupcake cup as per the instructions then microwave 30 seconds at the time until they seem ready. Someone else suggested to use 3 Tbsp cake mix to 1 Tbsp batter and microwave also for 30 seconds. I'll probably try the two mixes that came with the set and then an angel food mix that I have (which does not call for adding eggs). I'll also buy some store frosting (I hope it's not too thick). First I have to get some cupcake liners, though.

I also got three very cheaply made jewelry boxes ($1 each). Two of them already broke - so that was a big waste :-(

On a more positive note, Mike got an Eddie Bauer backpack for $4. It's sturdy, with a leather bottom and in very good condition, though used.

We also got two DS games for Mika, but paid $10 each - not much less than what we can get them new online for.

So really, the only good deal was the backpack. Well, I hope we learn the lesson and we're more careful in the future.

As I mentioned in my last post, today I bought a Girl Gourmet Cupcake Maker at the flea market. It was missing the mixing bowl, spatula and measuring spoon - and it came with only 2 cake mixes and no frosting mixes - but it was only $4. The girls could not wait to use the cupcake maker and we did so tonight after dinner. The consensus was that it was fun. ()Here is the review by Mika, my 8 yo).

The concept is pretty easy - you mix cupcake mix with a little bit of water, put it in a lined cupcake mold, put it in the steamer and microwave for 30 seconds - then let cool for one. Meanwhile you fill the frosting tube with frosting, put it in the stand, put the cupcake below it and push the arm: the frosting comes down while the cupcake spins around, making a twirl. The kids thought it was quite fun - though it's messy to fill.

What the kids (in particular Mika) enjoyed the most is being able to 1) do it by themselves (though I was there helping) and 2) have cupcakes in a couple of minutes.

We tried the two mixes we got with the kit. One did not come out but the other one did. They both tasted quite good. We then proceeded to make a few more cupcakes with angel food cake mix. To make them, we mixed well the mix with water. I started with 3 Tbsp. mix to 1 Tbsp. butter but it was too thick so I added more water until it had a thick but runny consistency. Then we microwaved for 35 seconds and, voila, the cupcakes were ready. They came out very well - though we found the angel food cake too sour for our taste. Tomorrow we'll use regular cake mix. The disadvantage of that is that regular cake mix requires eggs and oil, so rather than doing it by the spoon we'll probably have to make 1/3 of the package (given that it calls for 3 eggs). Not too big a deal, though. I'm pretty sure that any cupcake recipe would work, btw.

Our kit didn't come with the frosting, but given the reviews of the frosting at Amazon I wasn't too heartbroken. Instead we got some whipped frosting at the supermarket (I know, the stuff is nasty). I think the consistency was just right, not too runny that it would leak out of the frosting tube, but soft enough that it easily came out, but the hole on the tip is too wide so too much frosting comes out - and you end up with half as much frosting as cupcakes. I probably should make our own frosting instead.

What I would never do is buy their refills. They cost $12 for enough mixes to make and frost 5 cupcakes! That's $2.40 a cupcake (if I can still do math). And these cupcakes are ridiculously small (though really, a good size for a child). By comparison I spent $4.50 for the cake mix, frosting w/ sprinkles and cupcake liners - and I can make tons of cupcakes with that.

Now, would I buy the kit again? Definitely for $4 - even if the kids don't use it again (and Mika says she totally want to), it was worth the fun we had with it tonight. I would not pay $20 for it - but if you could get it for half that it wouldn't be a bad deal (if for no other reason than the price of the refills).

Update: We tried it today with regular yellow cake mix (cake mix + eggs + butter + water), mixed in the mixer and then cooked for 35 - and the results are great! Much better than either the mixtures that came with the set or the angel food cake. The cake rises very nicely and it's fluffy, the kids love it. We did make the whole package of mix, I refrigerated the leftovers in a lidded bowl and they worked just as well the next day.

We have given up on using the froster, however, as fun as it is. It's too much trouble to fill it up each time. Instead the kids are just frosting them with a knife.

We got the Cranium Big Book of Outrageous Fun!: The Write-It, Draw-It, Sculpt-It, Act-It Game-in-a-Book-in-a-Game! at Thriftown (I think) quite a long time ago. I think we paid less than $5 and the book/game was unused and complete. Once again, a great deal.

For one reason or another we hadn't opened it until yesterday, and I was surprised at how fun the book was. It has a bunch of activities for reading-age kids as well as a game than anyone can play. Mika had a great time with a pizza challenge: unscrambling words, putting them in a crossword matrix and then making the objects out of clay. Camila and I played the game, in which we had to act up words, make each other guess or make figures out of clay, and she loved it too. There are many more activities, and you write on the book with an erasable marker, so more than one child can use it.

The only minus, for me, is that the book, game pieces and game board are all attached, which makes it quite a bit clumsy to use. Perhaps for that reason it didn't sell well (it's not available from Amazon.com itself, so I assume that it's out of print). On the plus side, you can get it new fromAmazon.com venderos for just $11 including shipping, and the book is quite worth it.

Update: I've actually reconsidered my option on listia.com and wrote about it here. It's not that what I said below is not true, but that I've actually gotten some stuff for free and I'm quite happy with that.

Someone on a craigslist forum I frequent mentioned listia.com as a good place to get free craft material (or really, anything). I decided to give it a chance, but quickly realized that, unlike with freecycle, you can't really get anything for free at listia. I'm not really surprised, but a bit disappointed.

Listia works as e-bay, except that you bid with "credits", and you can earn credits by giving away stuff. They do give you a small amount of credits when you sign up and list something (I got 165 credits), but that's basically a one-time deal. Listia gives you the choice of having the winners of your bids pick up the stuff, you mail it for a price or you provide free shipping. The problem is that listia has a limited membership, specially in smaller cities, so it's not that likely that you'll find bidders that want to pick up your stuff (compare that with freecycle, which has much greater and only local memberships). If you charge for shipping, then chances are people will bid less on what you are offering (and remember, you are only getting credits) - and you have to go through the hassle of mailing it. If you provide free shipping, you have to pay for it.

If you don't have enough credits, listia does allow you to buy them at the outrageous price of 10c each. It's outrageous because listia things do cost a lot of credits. For example, a set of 10 paper cut-outs, with free shipping, is listed at 100 credits - or $10!!!!!. With the credits I got for free, I won an auction for a few charms (for bracelets). It "cost" me 150 credits, or the equivalent of $15. I probably could buy the charms for a couple of dollars.

As for me, I listed 6 items, including books and clothing. They are "pick up in San Leandro" only, and I think it's unlikely anyone will bid on them. After the auction is over (they are open for 7 days), I'll put them up on Freecycle or take them to the thrift store.

If despite what I said, you do want to join Listia - please do it through this link. This will allow me to get some free credits, and perhaps get something else for free :-)

I got the Fun with Hieroglyphs Stamp Kit many years ago, at the same time I got the Fun with Egyptian Amulets kit, both at the British Museum store at Heathrow. I gave it to my sister, who apparently had no interest in it as she didn't even open it. This Christmas she gave it to Mika as a present.

The kit is pretty cool, I was surprised that the ink was not dried after so many years. The images are not perfectly clear (specially using their ink), but they are understandable enough. Pretty much the whole basic alphabet is included, though I would have liked other common stamps as well (the ones of a man and a woman and the ankh one, for example). Still, it's quite nice.

My biggest complain is with the sounds they assign to some hieroglyphs, in particular to the bowels. I did not like arguing with Mika about how the vulture hieroglyph, equivalent to a glottal stop, is transliterated as an "a" and not an "e" or "o" - and that we should probably use the chick hieroglyph (a "w") to render "o".

For some reason they assign the sound "th" (as in thin) to the animal belly and "th" (as in "the") to the placenta, but those have been usually understood to be hard "h" sounds (as in the German "ich"). Now their assigment may be because, as far as I know, there are not "th" sounds in ancient Egyptian - but really, why not just convert them into "s" and "d" - as those of us who are native Spanish speakers do before we learn the correct pronunciation of these sounds?

Of course, perhaps my knowledge of Middle Egyptian sounds is out of date, but I don't think that's the case.

The booklet that comes with the kit has some interesting information and activities, but I think they are beyond my 8 year old, at least she hasn't seem interested in them.

This kit is out of print right now, but you still can find them through Amazon.com sellers, starting at $7 including shipping - a bargain, as I'm sure I paid much more than that. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has issued a new Fun with Hieroglyphs kit which seems very similar to the one we have. If you order either used, make sure it comes with the stamps and it's not just the booklet, though.

As a final note I should say that while the booklet provides information about basic information about hieroglyphs, it does not teach how to read more than a few Egyptian words. So don't buy the kit hoping to learn ancient Egyptian. If you buy it, just buy it for fun.

As for us, Mika used the stamp kit to stamp paper bags (which we'll use as goody bags) with the names of her friends. We will also use them for the kids to make bookmarks (with the papyrus paper I bought) - though I would like to get more colorful ink, as the black ink is quite boring. All in all, I think it's a fun kit and I'm glad we have it.

Mika & Camila's name written in hieroglyphs. The color in the picture is somewhat off - the top row should be black.

A while ago I blogged about my experience ordering stuff from Oriental Trading (in summary, they sell stuff which causes cancer and other diseases without disclosing it). I haven't ordered from them since, but I have been receiving their catalogs. All their catalogs. Seemingly every week. Multiple times.

I don't get it, why would a company publish so many catalogs and feel compelled to send them to all its customers? It's not as if each catalog presented unique merchandise.

Clearly it must work for them, or they'd stop the practice - but it'd still be nice if they were a little bit more conscious of the environment. They could at least use recycled paper.

Anyway, end of rant.

One of the activities I have planned for Mika's 8th Birthday Ancient Egyptian party is decorating t-shirts. For that purpose, I got a couple of booklets of Ancient Egyptian stencils at Amazon.com and some Tulip Fashion Spray Paint at Michael's. The booklets were Fun with Egyptian Stencils booklet which I got as part of the Exploring Ancient Egypt Fun Kit I bought at Amazon, and Fun with Egyptian Symbols Stencils. So far I have only used the first booklet, and I'm quite happy.

The stencils are quite small, each sheet is about 5.4" x 4". The sheets are laminated and they cleaned up quite well (though we'll see how many clean ups they can stand). They are, of course, too small for spray painting if used by themselves - but I cut out a rectangle the size of the stencil in the middle of a cardboard sheet, then taped the stencil there, and it worked quite well to shield the rest of the spraying surface.

I'm also happy with the paint. The kids had some difficulties making it spray rather than just blot, but I think it was a matter of applying the right pressure to the pump and having it at an adequate distance from the surface. I think the kids at the party will figure it out.

Both Mika and Camila were quite happy with the results. Mika painted a t-shirt she had with the ankhs and Camila just tried it on a piece of paper-cloth we had around. I got white t-shirts for the party, so I think it'll work even better.

I just bought this lipstick, a L'Oreal Colour Riche Lipstick at Grocery Outlet for $2. It has a printed retail value of $8.50, but I've seen it for $4 on e-bay. The color I got (they only had 2), mochaccino, seems to have been discontinued - that's probably why it's at Grocery Outlet. Surprisingly, I liked it very much. I also liked how creamy the lipstick is and how easy to apply - there is no friction at all. And it feels nice and moisturizing.

Alas, that's probably why this is the shortest-lasting lipstick in the history of humankind. I don't think it lasted even half an hour, and as if that wasn't enough, it bled below my lower lip. Maybe that's why they didn't sell and ended up at Grocery Outlet.

I heard last year that Zhu Zhu Pets, those hamster toys that supposedly interact with each other, were the "hot item" of the Xmas season and pretty hard to find. Well, apparently that didn't last long - today I saw a bunch at Grocery Outlet. They were about $10 each (which is about the same price you can find them online - Grocery Outlet doesn't always sell things at bargain prices), and I think they only had one color (beige), but I didn't look at the model. Still, it's pretty amazing how they went from hard to find to overstock.

As toys go, they seem to be OK. My daughters like the ones they got because they "feel so much like real pets" and play with them occasionally (they've had them for 2 1/2 months). But they haven't been able to get them to interact with each other. They would like more, though (and they're not getting them).

A little over a week ago, I wrote a pretty negative review of listia.com, a site that lets you bid for stuff using "credits" rather than actual money.

My review was negative because the site purports to be "free", but in reality there are too few users at the local level that can pick up the stuff you give away, so you end up having to pay for shipping either as a "seller" or a "buyer". That's not a big deal if you are shipping small things, but an issue for bigger ones (and everything I have to give away is large). On the plus side, I've noticed that sellers on listia actually seem to charge real shipping charges, unlike the inflated ones on e-bay. Plus, so far, we've gotten the things we won within a couple of days of winning them (but they were small).

I have to say that so far I've been really lucky with listia. I signed up and got my husband and sister to sign up as well. I was able to get a nice assortment of charms and a 1/2 oz of some essential oil mix. I have a few points left, so maybe I'll be able to get something else.

Mike, meanwhile, got a Hannah Montana bodypaint set and a lip bloss/body glitter set (he had to pay shipping for these, though). He still has points left as well. My sister got a kids make up set and also has points. So hopefully we'll get even more stuff, for free.

Of course, after the next round of stuff we won't have a way of getting enough points to get much. They do give you 5 points occasionally for signing in or bidding, and for putting them on your status in facebook, but most things do cost quite a lot of points. Still, I'm glad that I signed up for it and got some stuff for free - now, if there were only more users in San Leandro who would come and pick up the stuff I have to give away.

BTW, if you want to sign up for listia.com, please do it through my account, so I get some credits in the case you do manage to list something and get someone to bid on it.

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Update. Well, it's been one more week and I've come to realize that the listia experience is different for different users. Mike is quite lucky and often gets free credits for signing in, bidding and posting a listing to facebook. I rarely do. My sister is somewhere in the middle. I have no clue why this is so - what sort of formula listia uses to award points to some users and not others. It's very frustrating for me as well, though :-)

Something else I've figured out is that while listia charges 10-cents per credit (a ridiculous amount, and I can't imagine anyone pays it), the actual "value" of a credit is closer to 1 to 1.5 cents. A $5 Walmart gift card, for example, tends to go for about 500 credits. So if you offer free shipping, you really need to make at least 40-credits on what you are giving away to not lose any money in the transaction. And that only works for things small and light enough to fit in a regular envelope.

Anyway, so far I've been unlucky with my auctions. I've placed some Golden Gate Ferry tickets on listia.com, worth $15, with a minimum bid of 50 credits and I haven't gotten any bids (but that may be because of the geographical limitations of the item - listia still doesn't seem to have that many users). I've just put some scrapbook frames & stickers, we'll see how I do with that.

This weekend was Mika's Birthday Party and she got several nice presents - but my favorite is the The Little Box of Spells she got from our friend Paz. We're always looking for activities to do together, and this one couldn't be cooler.

The tiny kit comes with a tiny book of spells, two pink tea candles, a "magic" stone and a small bottle of rose fragrance oil.

The spells are very cool. They focus on love, friendship, protection and emotional well being. Some of the spells included are for helping friends in need, gaining forgiveness, have good humor and cooling down anger. You can see that they may end up being successful just by garnishing your willingness and attention on the issue that's bothering you. Also, they are general enough, that you can't really say that they don't work :-) I am not sure that I want Mika to believe in magic -after all, it's not real, but the results of doing spells like this can very well be so. So for the time being, I'm willing to let her try.

What I also really like about the spells is that they only require things you are likely to have at home, and they usually give you a choice of ingredients. For example, Mika chose a spell to keep fears away, and this one required writing with an orange or red pen, and sprinkling ground ginger or thyme on the paper. There is nothing more frustrating that wanting to do a project (any kind of project) and not having the ingredients at hand.

In any case, thank you Paz for the lovely gift, I'm sure Mika will enjoy it.

The kids and I just spent a while scrapbooking and organizing our supplies - and I've realized how much I've come to appreciate printing our own pictures. We're not the kind of people who get pictures printed in the first place, so we don't usually have many around to scrapbook with. Indeed, most of the printed pictures of the kids I have are the ones my mother has sent us.

But I do want us to have more recent pictures to use, and now we can print them affordably using the photo paper available at the Dollar Tree. The paper comes in two sizes: 8 8.5 x 11 sheets (which you can use to print 1 8x10, 2 5x7 or 4x6, 4 3.5x5 or 9 wallet size pictures) or 20 4 x 6 sheets. I personally prefer the 3.5 x 5 size for scrapbooking (if for no other reason than the frames I have are those sizes), so the larger sheets are more convenient for me - or they would be, if I was able to cut straight! Well, the frames hide the imperfections. I calculate that combining the cost of the paper and printing, I'm probably spending 4 to 5 cents per 3.5x5" print and 7 cents per 4x6 print. That's really not bad at all. Of course, my calculations might be off :-)

What really surprises me is the quality of the prints. The paper is glossy and the prints look great - specially considering our low end printer. Of course, I don't know how they'll hold long term.

Listia.com

It's horrible, I've gone from ranting about Listia.com to starting to like it to literally become obsessed with it. I can't tell you how many times in the last week I've logged in and search for free stuff. I thought this would stop when I got rid of all my credits (and I'm trying to), but as I keep losing auctions I still haven't managed to do so, so far. Aaaack!

Moreover, I broke down and actually listed stuff on listia, and had Mike list stuff too. (Hey, if you click on the links you'll see not only what we listed but what we won, which is kind of embarrassing, but remember, most of the stuff is to play with the kids - they're really into make up now :-)

My main reason to list was to see if there was any interest in the (small) stuff I have. I've been throwing the caps from coke bottles forever, and I was surprised to see that people actually wanted the codes that come in them (go figure). As for the beads, these are the ones I have no use for (they came in packages of assorted beads I bought). I particularly hate the bumpy beads. I already had a bid on my bird beads, which was kind of surprising. Of course, I'll have to pay the shipping to get rid of them.

And that continues to be the problem - it's really not practical to have the "buyer" pay for shipping on low-weigh items (where the shipping charges are no more than $3), specially as paypal has such horrendous transaction fees. But then you are stuck not only giving something for free but having to pay for the privilege. Oh well, this is just a trial.

Freecycle

I continue to use the San Leandro Freecycle to give away most of my good stuff: things the kids have outgrown, stuff I no longer want, stuff my mother sends me (some specifically to put on freecycle), etc. Basically, freecycle is a mailing list where you post stuff you don't want and people who want it e-mail you saying so. Generally you give the stuff to the first person who e-mails you about it. I'd say that I get responses to about 2/3rds of the stuff I post (people, for example, never want stuffed animals).

The problem with freecycle, however, is that people are very unreliable. I'd say that about half the time the person does not come to pick up the stuff they wanted. That means I have to keep it in my house for longer - which is exactly what I don't want. I'm becoming more and more disillusioned with freecycle as time goes by (one of the reasons why I'm trying listia with small stuff - there are too few local users to make it viable for big stuff) - but there are few alternatives.

Thrift Town

Thrift town is our local thrift shop (well, there is also a goodwill but they don't have good stuff). They pretty much take anything you have (I'm sure they throw away the stuff that won't sell) and I love it for finding clothing for the kids and a knick-nack (read tea cup) here and there. The problem with them is that they have limited drop-off hours and that we are not good about just taking stuff there. Plus I'm not thrilled that they are a for-profit corporation. On the other hand, it's the easiest place to drop off unwanted stuff.

Swaptree.com

Swaptree is a great place to exchange books. The way it works is that you list the books you have and no longer want, and the wants you want to get - and when they make a match they e-mail you and ask you whether you want to accept the trade. It's cool because they don't just do one-to-one matches. If someone you want book A and have book B, and John has book A and wants book C, and Jane has book C and wants book B a match is made. You also get to look through the books that you can "get now" by trading one of the books you already have - that's a great way to find new books that might interest you. They also give suggestions of books that you might like.

I've used swaptree intensively, in particular in the couple of months after I signed up. Then I ran out of popular books and for months I was unable to get any book I wanted. I just checked it out again, with a few new books I wanted to get, and was able to get two of them (A Smart Girl's Guide to Friendship Troubles and Oops! The Manners Guide for Girls) both for Mika. Of course, I'm paying as much to ship the books I have to send in return, as I would to just buy the books - but it's still cool. The big problem with swaptree is that I have to keep the books at home until someone wants them, which can take months.

So now that I only have unpopular books at home, I think I will take them off swaptree and just donate them to the library.

Friends of the Library - San Leandro

If you have extra books, you should really donate them to Friends of the Library. Pretty much every library has an attached group of supporters who fundraise for library services. And they do provide great services, not just new books, but, in San Leandro, at least, they fund most of the activities for little children. With budget cuts as they are, these would not be around without the Friends.

Donating books there is quite easy - you just take them to the library whenever it's open and give them to the people in the front desk. They'll even give you a receipt for them that you can use for your taxes.

The problem for us is that we always forget to take them. We never forget to go to the library sale, though :-)

So this is it, if you know of another method of easily and cheaply getting rid of stuff, please let me know.

Today I got a bottle of Mystic Blends, Success Oil made by Sun's Eye Oil. I got the 1/2 oz bottle off listia.com for 100 credits and boy, was it a bargain!

I just love this oil. It smells of incense mixed with peach and gardenias, it's just alluring and relaxing. I've decided to keep the closed bottle on my desk (the fragrance escapes it), just to be able to smell it. I'm going to try using a little bit of it with the next batch of lotion I make - I can't wait.

Today my friend Lola came to visit me and, as the kids are out of town, we spent a great day hanging out. We had lunch at Aroma in Castro Valley, did some shopping at Santos Spice Products in San Leandro, and Lola taught me how to do an embroidery stitch - It was the first time I ever embroidered (I made a wobbly "M") since I was a little kid.

In the afternoon we went to Thriftown, my favorite thrift store. Well, it's the only thrift store I ever go to. I hadn't been there in a few weeks, and they changed the lay out and now it looks more open, lighter and more attractive. And the stuff is still impossibly cheap (for the most part).

I like Thriftown because the stuff is not only cheap, but also generally good quality and in usable to great condition. I buy most of my kids' clothing there, and Mike has had a lot of great finds, from a great jacket to roller skates and other sports equipment. The only thing I usually buy for myself are tea cups, but now with this new lay out, I was actually able to find out quite a lot of things I liked - mostly for the kids, of course, but still, I think I did great. In this visit (and mind you, it was a pretty quick visit), I got:

A Girl Crush Magic Hair Beader. The kit seems to be in good condition. It was opened, a lot of the beads seem to be missing, but the fasteners and many other beads are there - I think that some of the plastic pony beads I have may also work with it. I still haven't tried to see if it works. It gets very mixed reviews at Amazon, but it retails for $16+ plus shipping, and I paid $4 for it. Of course, if it doesn't work at all it'll be $4 down the drain.

Hair Wraps is one of those kits by Klutz that comes with an instruction book and some materials to do something. This one, of course, making hair wraps. It looks pretty cool and I know Mika will LOVE IT. Well, she'll at least love my making hair wraps on her if they probe to be not too difficult. Wish me luck! :-) It retails for about $10, and I paid $3.

Fairies: Petal People You Make Yourself is another cool kit from Klutz. It seems to have been gently used and to have most of the contents. Basically it's a little kit that allows you to make tiny fairies. It looks super cute. It retails for about $11 and I paid $2.

Finally, as far as the kid kits go, I got a Totally Me! Jewel Flowers kit. I couldn't find anything about it online, and apparently it's manufactured for Toys R Us Australia (which doesn't do online sales). Still, not one mention of the product? It's weird. The package seems to be unopened and I don't want to open it quite yet.

Indeed, my plan is to put all these kits away before the kids come (so Kathy, don't tell them I bought it for them), and then take them out one by one during the summer when we're looking for new activities.

I got a bunch of other things at Thriftown. A shirt for Mika (shhh!) and a few very cute bags where to put handmade gifts. I got a VERY CUTE Hello Kitty "bag". Alas, it was a backpack and it's missing one of the handles, plus it needs to be re-sewn but I think I can do that and turn it into a pillow for Camila (who loves Hello Kitty). I also got a little photo album, and a huge lot of felt left-overs (including five felt sick-on sheets), for $1.50. Now let's hope I can find reasons to use it.

I think that was it. In all I spent $18 (I had a $3 off coupon) and had a great time.

4/10 Update

I went back to Thrifttown with Mike today and this time I actually decided to look in the kids toy section (which I usually ignore given the dismal state of most of the toys there) for games. Wow, was I lucky! I got three great finds:

-Illustory is an amazing kit which allows you to write and illustrate your own book (it even comes with markers) on special pieces of paper, which you then mail to the publisher who sends you back an actual printed copy of the book you made! Tres cool and I think it's perfect for what Mika is doing right now (writing lots of stories about girls who babysit difficult kids for money). Of course, Camila and MIka are going to have to figure out a way so that they can collaborate on the book - I do foresee frustration. What is most incredible is that the whole kit was in the box: the order form, the envelope, the forms, even the sealed markers. Somebody wasted $20 :( I got it for $2.

- Hullabaloo is another game by Cranium, this one apparently has you do silly stuff as ordered by a speaker. Whatever, it gets great reviews in Amazon.com, it's age appropriate for my kids, and, amazingly, the game seems unopened. Of course, that doesn't mean it works - but hopefully it does. It retails for $30 - I paid $3.

Finally, I got Are You Afraid of the Dark, a game named after an old Nickelodeon program. Mika LOVES Goosebumps, and I'm sure she'll love the game just as much. Of course, I have no idea what the game is about, but though it's a couple of decades old most of the pieces seem to be in the box. I think it was also $2.

So off they go to the suitcase where I'm placing all the games and crafts to take out in the summer.

This may very well qualify as the frilliest, most stupid post of my not very proud posting career. But hey, I can be as frilly as the best of them.

For some reason I decided last week that I wanted to get a lot of small lipsticks - I figured the girls might have fun using them to play make-up and they were less likely to cause much damage if they were the sample size rather than the full-size (plus the others would be cheaper). So I went looking for sample lipsticks at e-bay (where else? the things are not supposed to be sold), and quickly found out that there were two main kinds: Avon and Mary Kay, not surprisingly, given that these are products sold face-to-face by "consultants".

I'm not much of a makeup wearer, and my only experience with Avon was when I was a child and my mother used to sell the line to her friends (though mostly I think she bought things for herself). I've never even met with a Mary Kay representative. I remembered the tiny lipsticks and that's what I wanted - but I couldn't tell from the blurry pictures on e-bay whether the Mary Kay packaged samples contained a small, skinny lipstick inside them. I could also not find any information about that online (imagine that - but that's why I'm posting this, in case someone else is in the same dilemma ;-). But the Mary Kay samples were cheaper (about 17c each vs. about 25c for the Avon ones) so I decided to give them a try. Oh well, you win one you lose some.

As you can see by the picture above, the Mary Kay sample consists of a tiny applicator and a very small, thin layer of lipstick. They are not kidding when they say it's for ONE application. There is probably enough to use on both my daughters, but they have small mouths.

The amount of lipstick in the Avon samples is much more generous, plus they are more like lipsticks, so I think the kids would like them more.

The real test, of course, will be what they find more fun.

As followers of my blog (and my friends in facebook) know, I have been using lista.com for a few weeks now, mostly as a buyer (they give you a bunch of free points when you sign up), and finally as a seller. Well, after some calculations I've decided that Listia.com is as bad a business for "sellers" as Mary Kay.

In the last week I've listed or had people listed a bunch of small, lightweight stuff: scrapbook embellishments, beads pendants and little bottles of perfume. I offered free shipping in all of them, and put minimum bids so that it wouldn't end up being a completely losing proposition. Still, I pretty much lost money on everything I "sold". And by losing money I mean that I will end up having to pay in shipping costs more than the number of credits I got for the item in question.

While listia.com sells credits for 10-cents each, the value of each credit is actually about 1-cent. If you post a $5 Amazon.com gift card code in listia, you will get about 500 credits for it. That means if you want to buy credits all you do is buy the online gift card from amazon, then post it on listia, send the code to the winner and pocket the credits.

Meanwhile, postage starts at 44 cents for letters and $1.22 for one-ounce packages.

This means that the minimum amount you need to make out of anything that you offer free shipping for is 44 credits for things that will fit into a regular envelope and 122 credits for things weighing less of an ounce that you will put into a small package. You probably need to make some more credits to make up for the cost of envelopes, bubble wrap and packing tape. Note that I'm not considering at all the value of the item or of your time - it's a given you are giving those for free.

But in my experience so far, it's hard to recoup the actual shipping costs. We put about a dozen things for auction in listia and those that ended went for amounts of 42 to 154 credits. All those things will cost me between $1.22 and $1.56 to mail (I'm reusing envelopes but I will have to buy more masking tape, so let's add that too). So basically, at the end of the day, I'm spending more on shipping than I'm getting on credits.

While I love "selling" in listia - it's nice to know that people want things you have and are willing to "pay" for them and I have a bunch of beads I want to get rid of, I'm done with free shipping. My next experiment will be to charge actual shipping costs (postage + mailing costs) and see if people actually bid on my stuff. If not, it's back to freecycle :-)

Now, that doesn't mean I'll give up selling on listia at all. While it doesn't pay to list things with free shipping, it's a great place to get rid of the Coke Rewards points you get with coke products. Each code goes for about 5-credits - so if you drink a lot of coke, you can get something from your dirty habit.

A couple of weeks ago I found the Girl Crush Magic Hair Beader for $4 during a shopping excursion to Thriftown. I bought it as an activity to use in the summer, but of course, the girls were eager to try it so we did so last night and this morning. Surprisingly, it worked pretty well.

What you basically do is put a few beads in the applicator, then slide in a strand of hair, and push the beads onto it. Then you put a smaller clasp bead to prevent the other ones from falling. The one problem I've experienced is figuring out just exactly how big that strand of hair should be. Too much hair, and the beader won't work. Too little hair, and the beads will fall out. If you manage to get *exactly* the right amount of hair they will stay in and can look cute - but otherwise you are in trouble. I beaded Mika and Camila's hair today, and I'm expecting that they will come back with no beads on their hair. This wouldn't be too big a deal as I have a bunch of pony beads I can use, but I only have a few clasping beads that I really don't want to lose :-(

I wasn't particularly careful on beading the kids' hair - the picture below shows how messy Camila's head looks - but I think that with some care the beads could look quite cute.

All in all, it was a good purchase.

Today Mike was late on taking Camila to daycare, which gave us some extra time for mommy-Camila time. We used it working on the Orb Factory Sticky Mosaics Jewelry Box, which I got Camila for Christmas. All in all, it's been one of the best toys I've gotten her. For some reason, she loves sticking the mosaics (they are self-adhesive) on the little numbered squares on the box, and seeing the bright images appear. This is a task that she takes on (with mommy along) for a while, then she puts away, only to take it on again a few weeks later. Thus, it's four months after Christmas and she still hasn't finished it. But that's cool, as it means she still has more to do when it fancies her.

The results are quite nice. We only have one side to go (and probably not enough tiles, as they've gotten lost all over the house in the last months), but the sides that are ready are quite pretty. I think Camila is looking forward to using it as a jewelry box in the future (for all the jewelry mommy makes her and she never wears).

I'm thinking that I'll probably get her the fairy mosaic box, from the same company, next Christmas.

I've always been a huge fan of Mastermind, a game in which you have to guess the color and position of four pegs your opponent has hidden, so when I saw Mastermind for Kids at Thriftown for a dollar or two, I just had to get it. The kids have been playing with it this afternoon, and they really like it.

The game came without instructions, so we played it at first with the rules I remembered, which unfortunately were much harder than the actual rules I looked up later, but still the kids enjoyed it. The one problem is that Camila, my 5 year old, keeps cheating, though perhaps she won't as much now that we're making the game easier.

In all, I'd recommend this game for both kids and adults and I'm glad I got it.

It's night, I'm about to go to sleep. My teeth are brushed, my face washed and moisturized and I've applied some eye serum to the area around my eyes in a vain attempt to fight off wrinkles. As if that was not enough, my lips are tingling - they are plumping up.

Today, my last day on listia (I have to cut this obsession), I got a package of Avon products I "won" last week. The fun of that particular auction was that I didn't know exactly what I was bidding on (though I knew I'd be getting a bottle of True Glow perfume, which I discovered through another listia auction, and which I love). Who doesn't like surprises? And all in all it was a very nice surprise. In all, considering both the shipping charges I paid and the number of credits I used, I probably spent about $12-15 on this auction. For that money I got the perfume above (which would cost me that much just by itself), two mascaras, one lipstick, one eyeshadow palette, one eight-in-one lip palette, a moisturizer (of course, I'm not sure what to do with it given that I make my own lotions), a foot cream, a very ugly plastic hairband and the Avon Anew Clinical Plump & Smooth Lip System. This is a system with the purported effect of making your lips plumper. I kid you not. And that's what I put on tonight.

Nope, I'm glad you asked, but nope, I don't think for a minute that my lips need to be plumped up. Then again, I don't think for a minute that a couple of creams (one you put /on/ your lips and another one you put /around/ your lips) are going to plump up your lips (though apparently they are also supposed to smooth them away, making the lines less noticeable). I actually think it's pretty ridiculous to want to plump up your lips in the first place - I have nothing against plump lips, but really? I can't help but to think of Desmond Morris' The Naked Ape, where he theorizes that women's breasts evolved to look like buttocks while her facial lips evolved to look like those of the vagina. Indeed, you don't need to have much imagination to theorize why men may like plump lips in the first place.

But it's not my thing. That said, I got this product and I'm going to use it. Until I get bored, that is :-)

It's hard to believe that it's been less than a month and a half since I started my obsession with listia - an auction website that allows you to bid for items with "credits" rather than actual money, which you are given freely or earn by "selling" your own stuff. My obsession started with a mild dislike, which quickly developed into a mild like as I got my first items.

Those first items became addictive, however, and I was quickly bidding for stuff here and there, and even selling items, both to get rid of unwanted stuff and to gather more credits to get even more stuff for myself. And I got a lot of stuff, A LOT of stuff. All in all, when you combine what I got myself with what I got my husband/sister/friends to get for me, I'm ashamed to say how many items I won. Really, do I need that much more crap in my life? But getting those little packages everyday in the mail is a high onto itself.

Some of the stuff I got wasn't the best - though the plastic beads that I wasn't most disappointed with, became quite a nice bracelet for Camila. But I also got a lot of great stuff. I blogged about the lot of Avon products I got yesterday, but I also got a bunch of craft kits and games for the kids plus other craft items and a lot of beauty products (what the hell am I going to do with them?). I even got a bunch of photo paper and a personalized apron for Camila.

Of course, this stuff wasn't really cheap. I probably spent about $30 on the shipping fees of some of the things I really wanted and another $30 on mailing things that other people won from me. All this in a month and a half - so it's been QUITE AN EXPENSIVE hobby (without even considering all the productivity time it's taken away from me). Of course, it doesn't look that way when you are spending a couple of dollars here and a few stamps there, but things add up quite quickly.

So I'm quitting. Cold turkey. Today. Or at least I'm trying to quit. I still have some auctions going that I posted several days ago, and I'm praying to my unexisting god that nobody will bid on them. Everything I posted is terribly overpriced but it won't stop people from bidding - hey, it hasn't stopped me :(

Tomorrow is my birthday and I'm celebrating it today, Sunday. We started by going to La Note for breakfast, and followed it with a visit to the flea market. I was planning on giving myself a home spa in the afternoon, so I was very happy to find a Conair Body Benefits Bubbling Foot Spa for $5 (I didn't bargain) - the model seems to be discontinued, but newer versions sell for around $18. So it wasn't a bad deal. This foot spa doesn't get particularly good reviews, as it fails to keep the water warm for longer, but in reality all I wanted was a bucket wide enough for my feet, so the vibration and bubbling actions, imperfect as they are, are just bonuses. I had my first soak today and it was quite relaxing - I put some peppermint oil in the water and my feet were quite soft when I was done. So I'm happy and it's a good birthday present to me.

There is a lady at the flea market that sells fun toys very cheap - I mostly go to the flea market to check out what she has. This time I got a Chicken Socks: How to Make Pompom Animals book kit, completely new, for $1 (retails for $10), an Into The Forest - An Educational Food Chain Game, also for $1 (retails for at least $15), which also seems to be brand new, and an older model of the Tomy Mr. Mouth Game (paid $2, retails for $11.50). The box had been opened, and the previous owner had nicely provided us with a battery, but the plastic bag with the bees had never been opened, so the game clearly had never been played. Pretty cool. I really love that stall!

As I mentioned in my last post, yesterday I went to the flea market and one of the things I got was the Chicken Socks: How to Make Pompom Animals book/kit for $1. I thought it was new, but in reality it'd been used (though clearly gently), and there is only enough materials left to make perhaps half the animals depicted in the book. Too bad, because Camila (who slept so late this morning I didn't send her to school) and I just spent about 45 minutes making 3 of those animals, and she had a great time.

The kit is aimed to the younger crowd (4+ yo) and the animals are simple enough to be able to be made by kids without any help. The kit basically consists of pompoms of four different sizes and a bunch of woogly eyes, as well as some cardboard die cuts for wings and things of the sort. All a child has to do is glue the things together. The kit comes with a glue stick, but, perhaps because the kit was used, we didn't find the glue sticky enough for the pompoms. Regular glue didn't do it either, so we resorted to using our glue gun - that works very well, though it gets a little messy with strings of glue going everywhere and there is always the risk of burns. I wouldn't recommend it for kids younger than 5.

In all, Camila really enjoyed making the animals and she's looking forward to playing with them (let's see if she actually does so). Would I pay $10 for the kit, what it retails for? Maybe for a gift, it seems to expensive for a bunch of pompoms otherwise - but I'm got we got what we got.

A little while ago I came back from picking up Camila at daycare. Her daycare is about 2 miles from my house and I walk to pick her up and back - this means that every day, in the middle of the day, I spend almost two hours under the sun, not a trivial amount.

In my youth, that wouldn't have been an issue. I always tanned beautifully and seldom burnt (though I remember one trip to Ecuador where I didn't fare so well). But with age my skin has changed and now my face and upper chest acquires an ugly red tint if I spend almost any time under the sun (my arms, meanwhile, continue to tan just as well).

I usually hate wearing sunscreen, both for the oily feeling and the horrible coconut smell. I like spray sunscreens for this reason (and because they are easy to apply), but even those with a high SPF don't seem to work that well for me. So Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock has been a Zeus-sent to me (I was going to say godsent, but if I'm going to be invoking a god, I might as well go for the big honcho). The sunscreen is not as oily as other sunscreens, it spreads fairly easily and does not smell of coconut. More importantly, it works quite well. I use the SPF 70 stuff, what they have at Costco, and while I'm still a bit red after that walk, it's definitely nowhere as much as when I forget to put it on. This year Neutrogena has come up with an SPF-85 sunblock, available at Amazon but not at Costco, and I may try that when I run out of the stuff I have (but this stuff lasts a long time). Anyway, all of this is to say that I recommend it :-)

The girls and I have been playing at putting on make up quite frequently lately, so I've been looking for a good (and cheap) makeup remover. I found the Blum Daily Cleansing Towelettes at Grocery Outlet and, despite the price ($3 for 30), I decided to give them a try. Bad idea - they suck.

The selling point of these towelettes is that they are made with natural and organic ingredients (though if you look at the ingredients the only organic ingredient is the tea tree oil). Some of the ingredients (salicylic acid, gluconolactone) don't sound very natural, but who am I to know? The towelettes are pretty thin and they are a bit rough when you apply them. The ones I use are for combination/oily skin and they don't contain any oil - which means that they leave you with a dry feeling. That's probably a good thing.

The problem, however, is that they don't work well. My kids applied a lot of makeup to my face today, and I tried to thoroughly clean it with the towelette. It removed quite a bit of the stuff, but by no means all of it. I followed up by cleaning my face with cotton balls and a combination of 2/3 aloe vera gel and 1/3 jojoba oil, and I was amazed at how much makeup there was left over. Of course, using oil to clean my oily face is probably not a good idea - but it does work.

I have never been much of a perfume wearer. Though my mother has gotten me a few from time to time, I have never seen much of a reason to wear them. A big reason for this was probably that none of the perfumes I'd gotten were that pleasing to me.

In the last few weeks, however, I've gotten quite a few perfume samples from listia.com, a low-cost auction website. I was surprised to found several perfumes that I really liked. Norell
is one of them.

If I had to describe Norell the first word that would come to me is "powdery". The second would be "old lady". This is definitely the type of perfume you'd imagine a woman in her seventies-eighties to wear. It's completely non-offensive, with no high notes, and yet very pleasant. Surprisingly, I find it very calming. It doesn't directly remind me of my aunt Gladys, I can't really remember if she or my grandmother wore a perfume like this, but they very well might have. I thus associate it with old ladies in tailored suits, pumps and perfect make up - the way Gladys looked when she went out to any social engagement.

One thing that I've recently realized (about me, at least) is that I like wearing perfume so that I can smell it - not others. And I think I will put on this perfume from time to time when I want to feel all warm and fuzzy.

Michaella got the Paint & Peel Window Art Kit for her birthday and so far it's been a big hit with Camila and I (Mika hasn't really tried it yet).

It's a very simple concept. You put a sheet with pictures inside a plastic sheet cover. Then you outline said pictures with black acrylic paint, and once it dries you color inside the lines with colored acrylic paint. After that dries, you carefully remove the pictures from the plastic sheet and you can just put them on the windows. They stick easily and they come out easily.

The kit also comes with some googly eyes that you can paste on the pictures.

The kit works surprisingly well. The decals (to give them a name) are very colorful and the process is fun to make. The one thing that I don't like is that it came with just one plastic sheet cover - that means that only one kid can use it at the time. I found another regular plastic cover, and we'll see if it works just as well.

I also don't know if regular acrylic paint would work - or if this is some kind of special paint. We'll try it as well and report on the results.

I just got an older set of the 20 Questions for Kids game at Thriftown (for under $2 - it retails for over $28) and Mika and I was surprised at how enjoyable the game is. Basically, the game has 150 cards, each with the name of a person, place, thing or year. There are 20 clues as to what the item in question is - the quicker you guess, the more you score. The game comes with a playing board, chips and playing pieces - but they're not that useful when just playing with two people. The fun part, after all, are the questions.

I was quite surprised at how even Mika and I were in our play ability. It was just as easy or hard for me to guess as for her. I love games in which adults don't have too much of an advantage.

I picked up Clue Jr. The Case of the Missing Cake at a thriftstore a couple of weeks ago (for $1), and today the girls (who are on summer vacation) and I finally played it. It was a big success - they both liked it and it was neither too boring nor too challenging.

It's been years since I've played Clue (though I also picked up a used set of this at Thriftown), but I imagine the rules for this one are much simpler. Kids do need to know their numbers, but the game is really best suited for kids 5 yo and older, so that shouldn't be a problem.

One of the things I like about clue is that while some strategy helps, it's also a game of luck, which means that the younger players are not at too big a disadvantage.

Anyway, if you can pick it up for cheap, make sure to do so.

Today Mika and I had a great stay-at-home day together, about which I hope to blog later. But now I'm taking a break to write about two new (to us) products we used today that we enjoyed.

One is the Cranium Balloon Lagoon game, which I got at Thriftown for $2, seemingly with everything it originally came. The game seems to not be available anymore - it's about $100 at Amazon marketplace - but you may also be able to find it in a thrift store.

Mika and I played it today and it was a lot of fun. It has 4 stations. In one you have to flick toads into a pond, in another fish letters to form words, in a third push levels to get the correct parts of a pictures, and in the last one throw pictured dice through a chute until you get the correct picture. Pretty simple things, but fun nonetheless. Of course, Mika won, I'm not sure it'd have been as fun for her otherwise :-) In any case, well worth $2.

Another item that we used today was the Conair Quick Wrap Styling Kit which I got on listia.com for the equivalent of $4. It also seems to be out of production, but I'm sure you can find it somewhere. It worked surprisingly well. You just put a spool of thread inside it, thread the hair and some thread through the whole in the machine, and then press a button and slowly push the machine down as it wraps the thread of hair. My only problem has been being able to make the wrapped threads be straight, I think the key is to be pulling down on the hair stiffly as you wrap it. In any case, Mika liked the results. I'm hoping that the machine will work with regular thread, as I have a lot of that.

Anyway, time to go back to pay attention to my girl :-)

We're in the middle of summer vacation, and one of the ways I prepared for it was by getting lots of kits, crafts, games and activities so that the kids would not be bored to death and they wouldn't spend all day long watching shows on netflix (not that they don't anyway).

Today, for example, Camila and I spent the morning making soap and doing fun, gross experiments from the Scientific Explorer's Disgusting Science kit (which I will review in a couple of weeks when the cultures we are growing are ready). We had lunch, watched some TV (of course), read books, hugged a lot, and decided to finally open the Wrist Pix Kit which I got on listia a few months back.

This kit (an older version of the one linked above) was surprisingly fun. What you do is either draw tiny pictures on stickers or color the stickers included with the kit, stick them on rectangle metal beads. Then you put a transparent thick sticker on it, and you're done with the beads.

Actually using them to make jewelry is a bit more difficult. The kit comes with a bunch of nice 4mm plastic beads and very, very, very cheap elastic cord. The problem is that it comes apart very easily, making it difficult to thread - but not impossible. The other problem is that my girls apparently don't want to do the actual beading - making the picture tiles is more fun :-)

Anyway, this is a fun kit all in all.