Snug-A-Bug-Blog

I am looking forward to watching the Oscars® tonight. I have seen all the Best Picture nominees, but Letters from Iwo Jima.

Best Picture

My pick for best film is The Departed. I am a fan of Martin Scorsese and I found that he kept me on the edge of my seat until the very last shot.

Best Actress

I would like to see Kate Winslet from Little Children win best actress, although I did enjoy both Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren, who were excellent in their films.

Best Actor

I haven’t watched as many of the films that Best Actor nominees are in, but thought that Forrest Whitaker was excellent as Ide Amin in The Last King of Scotland . I would have picked Leonardo Di Caprio had the nomination been for The Departed .

Best Supporting Actress

Best Supporting actress hands down is Jennifer Hudson, she was excellent in that role and clearly stole the spotlight from Beyoncé. If you havn’t seen Dreamgirls you really should. I really enjoyed the film and I am not a big fan of Musicals.

Best Supporting Actor

For best supporting actor my pick Jackie Earle Haley from Little Children. He is probably best known from his role as Kelly Leak from the 1976 The Bad News Bears. I know that Eddie Murphy is predicted to win and I thought his role in Dreamgirls was excellent but it reminded me of his James Brown caricature from his Saturday Night Live days.

Other Awards

Best Documentary-Long Form

The only documentary I saw that was nominated was Jesus Camp. It was an eyeopener and a little creepy. If you haven’t seen it it is worth a viewing. An Inconvenient Truth is expected to win.

Best Foreign Language Film

I have not watched any of the films nominated for best foriegn film but have enjoyed previous work of Guillermo del Toro and Deepa Mehta. I am rooting for Water to win—Go Canada—but suspect Pan’s Labyrinth will take home the award.

I think the show will be funny since Ellen Degeneres is hosting. My biggest hope is that they keep the musical dance numbers down to a minimum.

There are new styles available from Snug-A-Bug Blankets. I have a couple new Animal Cracker blankets, one in very girly pink.

I have also brought back Bringing Home Daisy in a spring yellow. I have a couple of new prints: a kitchsy animal print in blue and pink, a couple retro floral prints—one in green and orange, and another in pinks and browns.

The fabric I am most excited about is an interesting modern, tattoo-art style block print. I hope to have these new styles available for sale in the next couple of weeks. So please keep checking back or add my blog to your feed reader so you can get instant updates.

Georgia was almost 1 year old when we started to teach her sign language to communicate early. She was quick to pick up the sign for “more”.

Since that time, she has learned a number of new signs including “milk”, “eat”, “change” and “dog”. She seems to go through spells where she uses her signs frequently then other times she rarely uses signs. I have found the real key to her signing is Jay and I—the more consistently we use the signs the more she uses them. Georgia is now beginning to verbally communicate—her favourite two words are “hi” and “cookie”—but is still using some of her signs.

Most studies of children who learn sign language show that they are quicker to communicate verbally and get less frustrated. I would definitely agree that Georgia doesn’t get easily frustrated and we have not had the complete meltdowns that I have seen with other babies her age. Can I say without a doubt that it is because of the early signing? No, but I am glad that we started using the sign language with her.

Read my previous post on our start with sign language, Georgia’s First Sign: How I Gave My Baby a Communication Headstart.

The two resources we used to get started with signing are:

• SIGN with your BABY Complete Learning Kit: US DVD Version, Book, Training Video (DVD), Quick Reference Guide
• Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk, New Edition

Both Chocolate Blocks and Mosaic blankets are back for sale in the Snug-A-Bug Blankets Shop. I am all out of the Mosaic fabric, so this is the last blanket in that style.

Share some chocolate with your special Snug-A-Bug!

Paypal is offering a $15USD rebate when you make a purchase of $30USD or more with your Paypal account.

The rebate is good from February 8, 2007 until March 31, 2007 in Canada and the USA at any shop that paypal is accepted like Snug-A-Bug Blankets.

The rebate is not automatic but will be in your account by May 28, 2007.

Happy Shopping!

This year for Christmas I was looking for a gift idea for my parents and Jay’s parents when I stumbled upon photo books. They are like scrapbooks—only they are done on your computer.

I have a macbook which comes with iPhoto. In iPhoto I can make a photo book right in the program. When you are finished creating your book—which includes style selections, image resizing and more—you upload your book to Apple and they send you out a finished book. The books come in a variety of sizes, colours and types, (soft and hard cover) and, in a wide range of prices.

I have played with different photo book software before from Picaboo and Shutterfly but I had never actually finished a book and ordered a printed copy. I was very happy I did at Christmas. The Photo Books were the favourite gift. The book was a collection of pictures from Georgia’s first year. Jay’s Dad takes it everywhere with him to show.

Since the success of the books I gave as gifts, I made a smaller softcover book of Christmas 2006. It is a nice way to showcase your photos—and in many ways is nicer than uploading your images to be printed—rather than putting them in a photo album.

I must admit almost all of my photos I have had printed in the last 10 years are sitting in photo boxes and are never looked at. I plan on scanning all of our wedding photos and making a wedding photo book as well as taking pictures of my grandparents and making a memory photo book for Birthday or Christmas presents next year.

The nice thing about the photo books is that if you are not that creatively inclined they have different themes to help you lay out your pictures. The other reason I really prefer it to scrapbooking is that it is digital. I have found that with digital scrapbooking you can easily change something you are not happy with.

While I liked the ease of using iPhoto to create the photo books, it is limited in the number of themes. Picaboo is a free program that you download to your computer and you can easily use your images to quickly make a book and you don’t need to be hooked up to the internet to create your book. The downside of Picaboo is that they don’t have a mac download.

Shutterfly also has a large number of themes and styles to choose from but you need to upload your images to their site which can be time consuming if you want to play around with more images than you plan to put in your photo book. However, since it is a web based system it doesn’t matter what OS you are using. They also carry a range of other photo gifts, prints, and free online photo sharing and photo storage.

I think the next photo book I make will be from Picaboo. They have a wider variety of page layouts and backgrounds. Unfortunately because they don’t have a Mac download I will have use my PC.

What has been your experience with making a photo books, and how did it turn out?

Picaboo - Create a Photo Book. Special Offer: buy 1 get 1 free!

New fabric is on it’s way and I hope to see it arrive anytime now.

I have a few new styles up at my etsy store as well as a few old favourites. Please keep checking back for the new styles!

I wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I hope you all have a Happy Holiday. Best Wishes from Snug-A-Bug Blankets

The sock monkey material has arrived and the sock monkey blankets are available, just in time for Christmas.

You can get them at my Etsy store, or if you don’t see one listed contact me directly and I can get one out to you.

Etsy is back up and running with a whole new look. They have changed some of the interface to make it easier for the buyer. It is still running a little slow as they work out the bugs. You can visit the Snugabug Blankets shop and see the new etsy.

I have a number of blankets that I will be listing there in the next couple of weeks. Are We There Yet? and Animal Crackers with different colour combinations of minky. I am also expecting a shipment of red sock monkey material any day now so I will have some monkey fur blankets ready for Christmas.

If you are interested in a Monkey fur blanket for your special snugabug send me an e-mail and I will let you know when they are ready to go.