I still need to get something for my husband, a.k.a. Daddy Bookworm! I never know what to get for him, because, on the one hand, he buys himself so much stuff, and on the other hand, everything he wants is wicked expensive! So it is always a struggle to come up with something for him! Yes, I do buy him books sometimes - some of them he reads, some of them gather dust. It’s a hard call, with him, to find a book that he’ll really devour. I could buy him a tonneau cover, except that he doesn’t have his truck anymore. There are so many different kinds, though - that’s pretty cool. But no, Daddy Bookworm is stuck in the minivan for now, so that won’t do. I will keep looking and thinking and hopefully I’ll come up with something!

Mark and his watches! Sheesh! He bought himself a new watch recently - he is obsessed with watches, among other things. He is always on the computer looking at new watches, and talking about watches, and he used to watch infomercials for hours on end about watches. He covets watches like IWC watches! He knows so much about watches, he should be a watchmaker!

He’s been wearing this new watch every day, including to work. And that has kind of bugged me, as it is a very nice watch. And the funny thing is, it did get broken - but, not at work. So I couldn’t even yell at him! He came home and the dog had gotten himself tangled with his cable on one of our outdoor tables. Mark was trying to free him, and Lucky took off running, swiping the cable down his ‘watch arm’ - tearing the watch off his wrist! The watch landed on the concrete driveway! Yikes! It is not completely broken, it is definitely salvageable, but, it is not exactly pretty anymore.

When Lucky gets tangled up, he gets nervous, so when you finally come to free him, he freaks out a little bit. The ‘proper’ method of dealing with this situation is to first unhook the dog, and then untangle the cable. Hopefully everyone wearing nice watches now knows this.

At Moosejaw.com, I have a chance to do just that! In fact, I could win two coats from them! There will be one winner every day next week. And the winner will receive two North Face Denali jackets. That would be so cool. I would probably send the other coat to my friend, Loretta. Or who knows - maybe I would sell it on eBay. I think brand new stuff does pretty well there - and then I could turn around a buy a lot of books on eBay. Not a ‘lot’ of books, but, a ‘lot’ of books. Do you know what I mean? I can’t stand that they use that word, because, it is so confusing. I do love, however, buying lots of books on eBay! It’s so exciting when your box comes in the mail! Opening it up and checking out all of your new books is so much fun!

Mark just came home from helping his mom with some stuff. After they got done working, they stopped by one of the local antique stores that is going out of business and has dropped their prices ridiculously low!

He got himself a few neat things and he got me the most beautiful wooden birdhouse, handcrafted in Tennessee. The birdhouse cost $7.00! It was originally $19.00, but, in Dallas, craftsmanship that nice would easily sell for at least $45.00!! I will definitely have to get a picture to post here for you! I think I’ve talked here before about loving birdhouses!

He also bought a little doodad for Shawn. Shawn has become a huge fan of purple over the last couple of years, and Mark saw a purple-haired troll and just had to get it for him. And Mark and I reminisced about how trolls were so popular when we were kids. It’s so neat when stuff like that - that was popular in your own childhood - gets your kids all geeked out, too! Like the chia pets - I think that is so cool they are gaining in popularity again. I remember when they first came out. I know my kids would love to have one. Well, Sammie and Shawn, anyway - Patrick would just mock the thing!

You guys all know that I’m a hardcore bookworm. Books are my friends. I love books. We all know that, right? Well - now you can watch me really become the bookworm!

Isn’t that cool? I had so much fun making it and I got to do so because the folks over at Zoombli were nice enough to sponsor this post here at The Bookworm Broadcast, so that I could tell you all about their amazingly-easy-to-use software! It was so simple, and quick, too, that now I just feel like the photo-morphing expert! The software is called Morpheus Photo-Morpher and one of the very cool features of it was that you could see a preview of your morphed photos before you actually rendered them. You could easily go in and change the speed if the change from photo to photo was happening too quickly to really look interesting.

It was so exciting to me to get to morph into my logo and become the bookworm. Hey, that sounds like my high school drama coach - “Become the bookworm”!
I bet I’ve got a few miniature customers who would enjoy seeing Mrs. Lisa become the bookworm, too! So Mamas and Papas - don’t forget to show your kiddos!

My sweet boys are turning 13 and 14 next weekend, and I can hardly believe it! It really blows me away, that the time went by so quickly! I adore my children, and I love to watch them grow and mature and experience ‘big kid’ life, but, I dearly miss those early years. There is something so amazingly sweet about being pregnant and being the mom of babies and toddlers. It was so hard and physically exhausting, that I had no idea just how much I would miss it, but miss it, I do!

And the slightest thing will set me off to crying and being all sappy (and having a houseful of teens laughing at me!). For instance, yesterday, I was thinking about how I was going to preserve Shawn’s ‘blankie’ that he got when he was still in my belly. It came from my aunt, and she gave it to me at my baby shower for him. And then I was off thinking about my baby showers and how sweet they were! And I was getting sappier by the minute!

Baby showers and first birthday parties - they are so special, and I bet lots of moms out there, just like me, run across an old napkin, or an old decoration - and just swell up with those sweet, loving feelings! Those occasions should definitely be treated very special, so that you can hold on to those memories forever.

A nice place to shop online for such occasions is PartyPail.com.

One of the big reasons that I like their baby shower party supplies so much is that everything is themed together and geared towards helping you preserve the memories. Their packages have various things, but, some of them have baby shower game books, and shower registries, and they match the theme of the party. So this is a great way to preserve your memories of the party. But the coolest part, is that some of them have matching scrapbooking supplies - so you can fully embed that theme in your memories.

This is so cool, because the more ways that you can connect with the party in your memories - the stronger the memories will be. Like with me, I bought Patrick’s first birthday party supplies at a local party store in the town where we lived. And every time we would go in there, for years afterward (for Halloween costumes, party gear, or whatever) I would see that exact same theme of first birthday party stuff, and I would just feel all of those awesome feelings all over again. If I had had something like the products at PartyPail.com, that would be so cool! They just offer you all that many more ways to preserve those memories of that special time! I love that!

I really like the Mod Mom baby shower theme that they have! The sweet, pregnant mama under the pink umbrella is so cute! And the text that goes with it is so sweet:

“Booties and bottles, diapers and pins, this is where the love begins.”

And the cool thing is the way they have bundled some of their products up into ‘kits’, so that you can just buy what you need without having to really think about putting it all together. Then if you need more than what is in the kit, or any extras, you can add those on, too. It can be really confusing trying to plan a party and figure out what all you need. So this extra bit of help you get from their prepackaged sets is awesome!

And they have these party-planning PDF worksheets on their site - for free! That is so cool! So you can just go and print them out, and plan your party like a pro! They have a budget worksheet, a birthday timeline, and a shower timeline. When a company offers free things to customers that are helpful, that is a big plus in my book! I feel honored that Party Pail sponsored this review, so that I could tell all of you about it!

See?

Ok, ok, those aren’t really my books, and heck! That’s not even my wall! It is, however, the coolest bookshelf I’ve ever seen! And I want one! No, I think I need one. Yeah, that’s it - I need one!

It’s called a Conceal Invisible Bookshelf and you can get it a very cool online store called VAT19 - where they sell all kinds of “Curiously Awesome Products”!!

The guys at VAT19 just started a blog, too! It’s the Vat19.com slash Blog and it is “dedicated to all that is curiously awesome”. And I must say that, so far, I am quite enjoying it!

GO READ A BOOK!