Friday, November 13, 2015

a spoonful of sugar

These are my favorites of what I'm listening to this week.  Put them on while you're cleaning or driving around this weekend!  They're so good.

"Somebody Loves You" - Betty Who

"Sort Of" - Ingrid Michaelson

"When We Were Young" - Lucy Schwartz

"Little Dancer" - Leroy Sanchez





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Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.  Remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
Epicurus

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Leesa

No, she's not a child.


She is, in fact, a bed.


So, Joel and I have been wanting a new mattress for a long time.  Ours had a HUGE dip in the middle, and we've both been waking up sore for at least a year.  We went mattress shopping a few times, but it's so hard!  They all were good, better than what we had, but not "perfect enough."  We weren't willing to commit to any of them.  I don't remember why, but one day, I started looking online and discovered that buying mattresses online is a thing.  What?!  I read about it for hours - how to buy a bed without trying it first, return policies, reviews of certain mattresses... and what started as, "Haha, wouldn't that be hilarious and weird if we bought a bed online?" became, "Alright, shall we do it?"

Here's what we learned:
Buying a mattress online can be less expensive because there's no middle man.
Most online mattress companies have 1-3 firmness levels, making it easier because you don't have to test a million beds, but a little scarier, too, if you like to try out the mattress first.
All online mattress companies I read about produce a pretty firm mattress - what's "average,"  or about 6-7 on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the cushiest.
Every company I researched had a 90-101 night return policy - if you don't like it, you can return it for a full refund.  They all have a free pick-up policy.  One company's policy was to pick it up and then donate it to a shelter.  (No restocking fee because they never restock a mattress.)

Ours is pretty foamy, as opposed to having coils.  It came in this box: 


It weighed 96 pounds.  Never have I been so excited to see a package on our front porch!  And never have I been so disappointed to hear the "you have a package" knock on the door that came two days earlier...


The mattress was vacuum-sealed in the box, so the instructions were that we position the box where we wanted the bed to end up, open it on its side, pull out the mattress, and cut the plastic enveloping it.  Then we just watched!  Five minutes later, we had this: 

a beautiful, super soft (to the touch), firm mattress...

THAT WE LOVE!

I never would've thought I'd enjoy a firm mattress, but man.  It's so nice.  We love it.  We budgeted for the possibility of buying a $100 mattress topper if we hated the firmness, but we didn't have to.  This particular mattress has a thin layer of soft foam on top of firm foam, so it feels cushy but firm... if that makes any sense.  We're still far away from our 100th night, but I can't imagine our opinion changing.  Would we buy a mattress online again?  Definitely.  Would we buy a Leesa again?  Also yes.  If you need a new mattress and want to lay on ours to see what Internet beds are like (and if I'm friends with you in real life...), let me know!  




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In life, the hardest decisions often have to be made more than once.  But each time, it gets easier.
Icefall

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Airheads FHE

I'm a member of a website called Smiley360 that gives free samples in return for reviews.  This last week, I got a box of Airheads and was asked to make something out of them and then show off what I made, so... 

Voila!

I made a tribute to Harry Potter.

I'll be honest, I'm not the world's biggest fan of the taste + texture of Airheads.  (Except their new rainbow strips, Airheads Extremes.  They're really good.)  I do like, though, that they're pretty allergy-free.  (They don't have gluten or peanuts.)  We don't have a lot of allergies in our family, but I appreciate companies that make foods that are more universally accessible.  As a teacher, it was hard sometimes to find treats that all of my 600 students could eat.  

This was, by the way, a really fun Family Home Evening activity / treat!  All of us had a blast.  The Airheads were pretty easy to mold with, and they come in really fun colors.  Kind of like sculpting with edible, stiffish clay.  The kids didn't compare their creations to ours, either (which they do with stuff like carving pumpkins), because if they were disappointed with how something was turning out, they'd fix it, change it into something else, or eat ate it.  

Also, because I'm supposed to include step-by-step instructions on how to make what I made, imagine these instructions set to the "tune" of a BopIt game:
1. Roll it!
2. Slice it!
3. Cut it with a roller!
4. Mold it!
(musical interlude)

If you're interested in checking out Smiley360, click here!

1 - Little Boy's polar bear face
2 - Little Boy's dumbbells
3 - Little Boy's letter A with buttons
4 - Little Girl's train / ice cream cones / lollipops/ ...
5 - Joel's scenic hill




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Let no one ever say that a poor tailor cannot do great things and win high honors; all that is needed is that he should go to the right smithy, and what is of most consequence, that he should have good luck.
"The Glass Coffin"
Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales