iPad + Velcro = Genius

iPad + Velcro from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Best Wedding Story, Ever

Billy Coffey, whose first novel Snow Day releases this fall, has penned an amazing tribute to some friends of his. Mike & Sarah just celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary. Get thee over there to read their story. There's none like it!

In the comments share your wedding day disasters - colossal or not.

I'll start.

*Wishing I had a digital wedding photo. Kids these days have it so easy.*

Today in History

Author of Frog and Toad, Owl At Home, and many other classics, Arnold Lobel, was born.

Cake + Books

(Cake by Glass Slipper Cakery.)

Two of my favorite things.

Hats off to the bakers with the talent (and discipline) to frost those masterpieces.

Click to see more: Cake Wrecks celebrates National Children's Book Week.

Prayers

*UPDATE* E came out of a nearly 10 hour surgery with flying colors! Thank you to everyone who prayed and sent positive thoughts! She's continued to amaze her cardio team. I saw her about an hour post-op, and she was asking for a drink of water. They have a long road ahead, but a huge hurdle down. For those curious, she was born with hypoplastic left heart.

This is my sweet friend E in the red hat. She'll be four in June. I was lucky enough to snap some beach pictures of her and my daughter last summer.

We've known Miss E's parents going on 15 years.

They'd love nothing more for you to be praying for her Friday morning at 7:00 AM (CST) as she undergoes her third major heart operation.

Because we'd love more days like this.

Thank you.

Kristin

Can't Stop Watching

An Author Talk

Last week I schlepped the kids to the library to hear children's author Carla Killough McClafferty. I met Carla a year ago at our state's SCBWI spring conference.

I have to say, she does a bang-up job of presenting.

Here are my kids. We were several minutes early. I'm one of those neurotic people that cannot stand to be late. Anywhere. Yeah, I was a front rower in college. But you know what? It worked out well because I met my husband (who came in very late, unshowered. But we don't talk about that.)

I let the kids check out books to read in case her talk ran a little long. (To be fair, she writes for the 5th grade and up crowd.) Let me just say, with all the dropping and picking up of, arguing over whose book belonged to whom - I'm just grateful Carla didn't show us the door.

My nine year old was interested in her book on Marie Curie. She told us stories of how women in the States, the Radium Girls, painted radium on watch faces for their glow in the dark effect, but these women would also paint their jewelry and buttons. Never realizing, of course, the danger of exposure.

My son loved seeing the photos of Marie Curie's laboratory, which Carla visited on a trip to Paris.

By this point, the two year old was melting down and the three year old was break-dancing, so I rummaged through my bag. Writerly types will know a writer always has a notebook. Well I sacrificed said notebook for the sake of the talk.

Pages of purple highlighter. Saved the night. And my eyeballs because I was coming really close to jabbing them out. (Nothing to do with Carla, mind you.)

This is the book we came home with. I had NO IDEA an American journalist helped rescue more than 2,000 Jews from pre-WWII Germany. Some of those Varian Fry rescued? Marc Chagall and Heinrich Mann.

Carla's next book is about George Washington. He did not have wooden teeth. One of my boys asked. :)

If You Give a Mom a Muffin

If You Give a Mom a Muffin

(Based on If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff)

If you give a mom a muffin,

She’ll want a cup of coffee to go with it.

She’ll pour herself some.

The coffee will get spilled by her three year old.

She’ll wipe it up.

Wiping the floor, she will find some dirty socks.

She’ll remember that she has to do some laundry.

When she puts the laundry in the washer,

She’ll trip over some snow boots and bump into the freezer.

Bumping into the freezer will remind her she has to plan supper for tonight.

She will get out a pound of hamburger.

She’ll look for her cookbook. (101 Things To Make With a Pound of Hamburger)

The cookbook is sitting under a pile of mail.

She will see the phone bill which is due tomorrow.

She will look for her checkbook.

The checkbook is in her purse that is being dumped out by her two year old.

She’ll smell something funny.

She’ll change the two year old.

While she is changing the two year old the phone will ring. (Of course!)

Her five year old will answer it and hang up.

She remembers that she wants to phone a friend to come for coffee on Friday.

Thinking of coffee will remind her that she was going to have a cup.

She will pour herself some.

And chances are,

If she has a cup of coffee,

Her kids will have eaten the muffin that went with it.

(Author: Kathy Fictorie)

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. I hope someone saved a muffin for you this morning. I had a banana. :)

~Kristin

Do the Write Thing

My oldest was born in Tennessee, so I have a soft spot for the state. The homeless population has especially been on my mind this week. Between the flood and the oil spill, a lot of folks are in need.

Writers, take a look at the bidding for Do the Write Thing for Nashville started by my friend, YA author and Nashville resident, Myra McEntire.

The auction items are amazing:

*A Signed Copy of The Dark Divine by Bree Despain, and an early ARC of The Lost Saint.

*Signed copy of Down On The Farm by Merrily Kutner.

*Ten page critique of your MG/YA novel by Josh Adams of Adams Literary

*Agent Mary Kole, a query critique

*30 minute phone call with Chris Richman of Upstart Crow

You have 3 days. Happy Bidding and God bless.