min-myinnersoul

The story that two garbage cleaners in New York were fined and forced to retire after being caught accepting a tip of $ 5 caught my eye.  Not for the reason you might think. This story would provoke hoots of laughter in my country where nothing happens in the public service without a gratuity.  Even in NY, this must be an incredulous story - every man and a dog demands tips shamelessly for just existing in the same space as you. But the real reason this story has prompted this post was buried somewhere in the middle.   The two garbage men apparently netted $100,000 each, including overtime. Granted that they had put in long years of service. Granted that they probably earned lots of overtime. But still a wage of $ 100,000 for a garbage collector shows everything that is wrong about the United States. No wonder they lose jobs by the droves to India and China. No wonder unemployment is a stubborn problem.   But this post is not to highlight the completely unrealistic pricing for labour

Back at the beginning of this year, I decided to make S.R. her own quilt, and to turn her room into a bigger girl room. When I was pregnant with her, I made one for E, which you can see here at the end of his bed. I felt it was time she had her own "made by Mommy" quilt.  Her favorite color is purple, so I searched for several weeks to find the perfect combinations of fabrics. Riley Blake had a line called Dress Up Days, and S.R. and I both fell in love with the prints! After seeing the Girl Inspired's Scallop Quilt , I knew that would be the perfect design for S.R. I will have to say, this was a rather expensive quilt to put together. S.R. has a full size bed, so I had to purchase extra fabric. After all the blood, sweat and tears (yes, all three occurred), it was definitely worth the fuss. I attempted to machine quilt it myself. However my machine messed up and the bobbin stitches were all loopy, so a very dear friend and I had to pick stitches for over 3 hours. Bless h

What is common between a park demolition and a raise in bus fares. Well, something profound , I believe. Because in the last one month, I dare suggest that these were the two most important events in the world (NSA be damned ; as if that was a surprise) The park issue was the first and it happened in Istanbul, Turkey.  The government had planned to demolish the Taksim Gezi Park and use the space to reconstruct the historic Taksim military barracks. About 50 environmentalists occupied the Park in protest. The police , predictably evicted them. That snowballed into massive nationwide protests and a huge Occupy Taksim Square movement started.  The issue of demolition of the Park has now given way to a protest against all sorts of unrelated issues and drawing crowds numbering in the tens of thousands. It is now an anti government protest without a coherent theme or leaders. A big section of the population is just protesting without a clear understanding of what they are protesting against

Some businesses I can completely relate to. Most businesses I understand,. But there are some that completely fox me . Take the case of the quaintly named company,  Lululemon. I was, of course, blissfully unaware of its existence until I read a news item that its CEO was leaving (polite term for being fired). Naturally, with a name like that, I couldn't but help read up. Apparently this Vancouver based company is  in the business of "yoga inspired" athletic gear , whatever that means. They are fast growing , but reportedly had a product problem recently which led to the CEO's exit. The "product problem" made further interesting reading, Apparently, their Luon range of black Yoga pants was getting too many customer complaints - the product was too sheer and ,er, "showed too much" ! A particularly sensitive topic when when doing yoga which involves stretching and contortions !! The outcry was so much that they had to pull the product from the shelve

Now that summer break is here, I decided it was time to reinstate the chore responsibilities for the kiddos. Last year, I made a chore list , and my intentions were to teach E and S.R. responsibility and the value of hard work, but my system was truly broken and our excitement for it lasted all of one week.  Expecting my kids to do the same things over and over again day after day was just expecting too much. I certainly don't do the same things day after day. We all need a little variety, right? So to fix my broken system, I searched on line for age appropriate chores.  It's truly amazing what little ones can do...we really don't give them enough credit. If you check my Pinterest board , you can visit the sites where I found my ideas... This particular idea came from the Martha Stewart website .  Thankfully this little project was mostly free to me. I had one sheet of magnet paper left. I printed the kids' pictures and the chores with the money value on them(in 25 cent

Summertime is in full swing around here, and boy are we busy! Between VBS, swim lessons, piano lessons(which start next week), play dates, and visiting family, there isn't a whole lot of crafting going on here lately. I have been able to sneak in some cute little applique outfits for S.R. though:o) She loves all of the new outfits that I have made her...thankfully! For all of these shirts, I googled the images, and found the ones I felt would be easiest to stitch. I copied the images, pasted in Word, printed them out, and used them as the templates.  Super quick and easy.  Crab with coordinating shorts. Anchor with coordinating skirt  Butterfly with coordinating shorts  Octopus  Watermelon (which will have coordinating skirt)...I found this idea on Pinterest. This one is my fave! I have received permission from E to make him some shirts, so I will share those as soon as I get them made.  I hope you all are having a great start to your summer break!

I sometimes wonder, who the real winner of the Cold War was. Traditional wisdom is that capitalism won over communism, right ? The Western world over the Soviet bloc. Freedom and liberty over authoritarianism and government control. Etc Etc. But I wonder if this is really true ? Take the capitalism versus state enterprise debate. Today capitalism is a four letter word to much of the world. The fastest growing economy in the world and the second largest, China,  is significantly  state enterprise driven. Government expenditure as a % of GDP is 53% in France (surprise surprise), 47% in the UK, 43% in Germany and in supposedly the bastion of free market capitalism, the United states, 39%. Government spending has propped up the global economy for five years now and bailed out financial institutions when they were mired in the quicksand. What about freedom and liberty. After the revelations over the last couple of days from a certain Edward Snowden, we may have to redefine the word liberty.