Pumpkin Spice Latte Season Fall has finally begun.  The days are getting shorter, the air crisper and there are pumpkins everywhere.  All of this suits me just fine.  I love layers, evenings by the fire and pumpkin anything.  Also means I don't have to slather myself in as much sunblock, for which my freckles are happy about.

Oh, Pinterest, I <3 you!

Here's the outfit I put together from my wardrobe, adding a few things to give it more of a fall look.

Today is all about books, four of them to be exact.  I'm a book addict.  I read voraciously, two, three, sometimes four books at a time.  It's a sickness and I admit to it.

Books are amazing things.  They can teach you about things you never knew existed, or take you to far off lands to meet exciting people.  Sometimes boring people too, but we just set those books aside and pick up something else.  I've had a number of stories really resonate with me.  Sometimes the characters found a place in my heart and at the end I was sad to see them go.  Sometimes the places were lands I wanted to explore.  Sometimes, the story line was fantastical and even knowing the impossibility of it, you want to be a part of it.

Most of my favorites are parts of a series.  I guess I just don't like things to end too quickly.  That said, the Dragonlance series is on my list.  It's also the only fantasy series that will grace this list.  There are rangers, and dwarves and barbarians, a kender who accidentally ends up with 'stolen' items in his possession all the time and a mage or two.  The characters are fabulously written, the story is engaging and even 20 years later I can distinctly recall a scene where one character, wielding a frying pan, put the beatdown on a few of the bad guys of the book.  Makes me chuckle to this day.

For any of you that know me personally, you know I work with a bunch of guys who really do not get my infatuation with Instagram.  That's okay.  I don't get their fascination with boobs or Starcraft, so I guess we're even.  What I have heard them say is why would you want to take a perfectly good photo and make it look old, dirty, and blurry?  What is the point to that?

My view of Times Square

As a species we enhance things all the time.  Just using drawing as an example we went from cave drawings to paper drawings that suffered from a lack of perspective.  Then, along came Filippo Brunelleschi in the early 1400's and poof we have linear perspective.  Since then it's been built on by others and now we have some amazing 3D CGI to show for our enhancements.

Market Street bridge at sunset

Getting back to Instagram though, the popularity is driven by a number of things.  One is nostalgia, the viewer may recall the days of Polaroids and black and white film, or just like the feel of being a part of a different era.  Another is the ability to move the viewer away from reality.  Depending on the filter applied, or the blur and how much of it there is, the image can become very abstract requiring imagination from the viewer to give it a meaning.  Lastly it's a way for the viewer to connect with the image, or the photographer in feelings, memories, or even experiences that the photo is depicting as well as share their own photos with others to do the same.

Carlisle, PA mural of Molly Pitcher

Instagram isn't for everyone, and that's okay.  Turns out I'm still not a fan of boobs or Starcraft and that doesn't make me a bad person either.  And to answer their question of why do I want to do that to my perfectly good photos: by running it through those blurry, dirty filters, I've made that image mine.  It means something to me and I want to share it with others so they can enjoy what I see in it.

If you'd like to see more of my Instagram photos, you can look me up (drsizer), or the last few are always on the widget here on my site.

These are my favorite photos I've enhanced with Instagram so far.  The first is a vacation photo, the second is just from my drive home, and the last is a bit of home for me.  That caboose has been a fixture of the town I grew up in for as long as I can recall.

Boldt Castle Power House

Yellow Breeches Creek

New Oxford, PA Train Station

Who knew a fashion post could be (in part) about autism?  Bet you didn't!  Well, my lovelies, today it is.  It's also about one of my favorite things, SHOES!

Autism has some of the craziest signs for a disorder, ever.  One of them happens to be toe walking, which, if you have a toddler is a common thing.  Toddlers will toe walk, slap their feet down flat or roll their foot like an adult as they learn to get themselves ambulatory.  For some people with autism, it's a learned skill to not walk on their toes.  Minion #1 is one of those people.  We still work on that skill, especially if he's getting tired.  As with everything else, as your  mind and body tire, the brain relaxes and things you have to think about doing go to the wayside.

As you can also imagine, it takes a toll on his shoes.  The wear patterns are different on his long toed, narrow feet.  The treads on the fronts and sides are worn down long before the rest of the shoe.  When he was younger, due to the shuffling and scuffing, the treads would come away from the shoe as well.  We tried a number of things to address the walking issues he had.  We went from constant reminders, showing him again and again how we walked to letting him go barefoot.  Nothing really worked.  Until flip flops.  Turns out toe walking in those makes you trip over your own feet.  After a summer or so of that, the issue resolved itself, minus a few small reminders now and then when he's tired.

We women also do a good bit of toe walking if we wear heels a lot.  It's a bit different in that the foot is forced into that position, but it does the same things.  There are a number of issues that can crop up from wearing heels, from bunions to stress fractures of the foot.  So, if you love your heels like I do, here are a few tips to keep your feet feeling awesome.

* When you buy shoes, make sure they fit your foot.  Not all shoes from all makers in your size will.
Clarks are a great shoe.  They don't fit my foot though.  My go to heels are from Aldo and Easy Spirit for flats.  I don't even feel them on my foot.

* Pad your shoes so you're always comfortable.  They make inserts for just that reason.
There are inserts for the balls of your feet, sides, heels...etc.

* Own more than two pair of shoes, guys.
If you wear the same shoes over and over before they have a chance to dry out, you'll end up with some rank smelling shoes from the bacteria that's breeding in there.  Freezing them for longer than 24 hours will kill the bacteria.

* Pedicures - do them yourself if you like.  It keeps the blisters, calluses and cracked feet to a bare minimum.

* If you're not great with heels, but still want to wear them, try a lower wide heel, or a wedge.  There are plenty of styles out there that don't look like your grandmas shoes.


Also, here is today's outfit

Last Thursday was back to school night at the middle school.  Minion #1 who attends this school is in a special autism class for some of his day, and back to school night is usually a great way to introduce ourselves to his teachers, get their impressions and give them ideas if they are having trouble teaching him.  Usually, is the word though we want to stress here, because this year, as we've found out teaching isn't really what they are doing.  For those of you just tuning in, feel free to read a few other posts about our local school district and how we've had to file complaints for not following the IEP as well as contact the Attorney General's office to report them for medicaid fraud.

After speaking to his history teacher, it was his opinion that he simply change all the tests to things that he could pass without really having to work at understanding the material.  If he could just know names and dates, and that was good enough, and the best part is that he would gets A's too!  The science teacher informed us that he was only rehashing material from the two previous years, and that would be a struggle for him, since he wasn't sure how you could rehash the material and make it seem new.  Oh, and science class, wouldn't really be 'class' it was really more an online thing and they would do a project or something too.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think the King's brain may have imploded at that point.  The incredulous looks he was giving me coupled with the opening and closing of his mouth, rather like a stunned trout, while trying to form angry words was giving it away.  Whatever, it was time to go home.

We found out a number of other things that evening as well.  One was that the autism program that the school started is failing miserably and won't be continued at the high school level.  Another was that there still aren't any other students that are high functioning autistics, so minion #1's getting pretty far behind in his own studies due to the other kids not progressing.  My personal favorite though was that the school is simply neglecting to provide speech services this year, contrary to the IEP and the settlement reached (not monetary)  with the department of ed. over the summer.  So, I'll have to start filing complaints, again.

As parents, I think we all find faults with the public school system.  From teachers that care too little to bad food that's offered in the cafeterias at lunch time and all things between.  At this point though, we've reached our limits of what's acceptable.  We're looking into cyber school.  Which, while still public school it gives us the opportunity to be more involved and interact with our minions throughout the day while not being responsible for developing a curriculum.  With any luck this will allow them to achieve their potential instead of just whatever the school thinks they need to squeak by.

Has anyone else run into this sort of thing?  What did you decide to do?
If any of you have decided on cyber school what has your experience been like?

When we left off with part 1 of this tutorial, we had just cut out our materials and were getting ready to sew.  This week, I'll show you how to make the casing for the piping, sew it to the chair pad, make the ties, sew both sides together and stuff the cushion.  I swear it's not as hard as it sounds.

Taking the strip of 2" wide fabric, measure around your cushion and give yourself an extra 2".  This will be our casing for the piping.  Cut a length of piping the same length.  Wrap the piping in the fabric, wrong sides together and pin so that the fabric is tight to the piping.

Keep the edge of your presser foot on the piping to ensure a tight casing.

Once you have the piping done, pin it to one piece of your cushion.  You'll be pinning the casing towards the middle of the cushion and right side up.  I found that using the pins at the sewing line in the casing worked well and kept the fabric taut.  Sew the piping to the cushion on the same seam line as before.  Again, if you keep the left side of your presser foot on the piping, you should be sewing on the same line as before.  Seam allowance here is about 1/2".  

Sew the casing to the cushion, tucking one end inside the other casing for a neat edge.

Next we're going to double check the shape and size of our cushion on the seat we'll be putting it on.  Don't worry if it seems just a bit big right now, that's a good thing.

Yes, my butt shall look good on you!

While you're admiring your handy work, plug your iron in and wait for it to heat up.  We're going to create the ties for our cushion next.  Take the lengths for your ties and fold them like below, then iron them.

How cute, my nails match my ironing board pad!

Fold your tie in half and iron it again.  Use pins to hold the ties together.

I pinned the edges due to my fabric being so thick.

Either tuck the ends in and sew those closed, or zig zag the ends.

If you want, baste the ties to the casing.

Take your time pinning and sewing this, if you don't the piping will look messy.

Start sewing just before the first set of ties  end just after the second set.

As I was sewing my cushion together I met up with Murphy, from his law.  He explained to me that since I was nearly finished with this project and my cushions were looking FABULOUS, he should give me a hand.  As a side note, always make sure you're using the right type of needle for your fabric.  Usually it will prevent things like this from happening.

Clipped edges at the corners.

The backside of the house I grew up in.

2).  Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action. - Mother Theresa

Washington Monument, before the earthquake.

4).  "I need a vacation to recover from my vacation" - said everyone, always.

Mount your whales, we ride at dawn! Deep Creek Lake, MD

5).  There's a lot of fantasy about what Scotland is. - Sean Connery

Eilean Donan - there was a drought the year I was there. Hence the lack of water.

Cathedral Church of St. Andrew along the River Ness, taken from Inverness Castle.

We're to our final few days of a month long free trial from Time4Learning.  I'd like to thank them for the opportunity to review their product and see how it really works before committing to it.
I learned a number of things this month from doing this.  One is that my youngest minion needs to be prodded, a lot, about his school work.  Some of that is the ADHD kicking in, some of it is that it's not fun for him without a specific purpose.  The older one though has really taken a liking to it, even to just go through the modules.  As a parent you can log in and see what your kids are doing, how long they spent on topics and what they are scoring on quizzes.

Screen capture of a history lesson - once on his own, once with mom.

Last week, the older minion had a dentist appointment in the morning, which when you have to take meds an hour before becomes a bit more of a chore than just picking up your minion and taking them. So he missed history that morning, but brought the homework back from class.  Lucky for us, the homework didn't match anything in the book and he was at a loss with what to do.

Even though minion #1 is autistic, we do not do his homework for him.  I'm not in the 8th grade, so why should I?  What we did find what that there was a nice little module about pre civil war USA in Time4Learning that matched up what they were studying that day.  We had to run through the material twice,(once on his own, I looked at the quiz, saw he wasn't getting the material, and then again with me) and do the quiz but he did learn it and was then able to do the homework on his own and understand it.  That in itself is a valuable tool and resource.  I couldn't be happier with that.  It also tells me that anytime he needs a little reinforcement, Time4Learning will definitely help.

We will definitely be keeping Time4Learning around as a resource and secondary learning tool.  As far as I'm concerned it's invaluable with an autistic 8th Grader.  As to minion #2, he thinks someday he'd rather be out of the classroom environment to learn.  He's not a big fan of the other kids (they really are bratty, mean, and generally bad mannered, so it's unsurprising) and chooses to not play with them or have much to do with them.  I can imagine it's a lonely environment for him anyway.  As weather gets cooler and we stay inside more, I'll be devoting more of my time to their studies (and my own if I'm lucky) so we'll see how things go.  Who knows, I may end up with homeschoolers yet!

Some people call the third season of the year fall, some autumn and some of us weirdos refer to it as pumpkin spice latte season.  It's also pretty much my favorite season, ever.  There's really so much about fall to love and one of those things is food.  My fall season arrives with the start of pumpkin spice latte.

For those of you who are allergic to milk, and soy getting a latte anywhere can be a huge pain, mostly in the tummy.  Most places however, will make you a latte (not at a discount or anything) if you bring your own milk. I'm a fan of almond breeze (vanilla, unsweetened) and you can get it in small shelf stable 4 packs.  This will make 2 lattes.  So you'll either need to double fist your coffee that day, or take a friend with you.  Either way, you get a pumpkin spice coffee that won't kill you, or at least make you wish you were dead.

Another thing I personally adore about pumpkin spice latte season is cooler weather.  Yes, I know I've been wearing sweaters all summer because I'm cold, but now I can wear hoodies and vests and my really cool boots with warm fuzzy socks and people won't point and laugh.  In the evenings we can make a nice fire in the chimnea on the veranda, sip some hot chocolate or make smores.

Easy recipe for gluten and soy free hot chocolate:
1- 1.5 cup(s) of almond milk per person
1 heaping teaspoon cocoa
2 heaping teaspoons sugar (optional)
Heat milk until it just starts to climb the pan, take from heat stir in the cocoa and sugar.  Taste and adjust for you.  Some like to add in some cinnamon, some vanilla.  Make the recipe yours.

Smores are another thing we GF/Soy free people have issues with.  The folks at Kinnikinnick have made some graham crackers that actually taste like graham crackers.  Find yourself some quality chocolate and gluten free marshmallows and you'll be set!

A few other things that make pumpkin spice latte season great are football games, trips to the orchards to pick apples, wandering through the pumpkin patch to find the perfect pumpkin for each of us and savory meals after crisp day.

A few of my favorite meals for this season are things from the crock pot.  Anything that makes itself while you're out doing fun things through the day is a bonus in my book.  This year we've adjusted our chili so it's vegan as well as the cornbread I normally serve with it.  Earth Balance makes one buttery variety that's dairy and soy free so we can have the cornbread again.  My mission for this weekend is to figure out Irish Stew.  My normal recipe calls for beef, and beef stock, potatoes and Guinness Stout.  Pretty sure that will kill me.

Photo from gourmetrecipe.com

So I'm going to try this instead:
4 tablespoons olive oil
3 medium leeks or 2 medium onions, diced
1 cup cup parsnips, sliced
1 cup carrots, sliced
1 cup  rutabagas, sliced into chunks
1 cup turnips, sliced into chunks
1 cup celery, diced
4 cups vegetable stock
1 bottle of Redbridge (or your favorite GF beer, for those of you wanting to fancy this up, use a cup or so from your favorite t-box.  A Merlot or Burgundy would work best, but it's wine, so whatever.)
1/2 cup lentils
1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
A few sprigs each fresh rosemary, fresh thyme and fresh marjoram (or 1/4 teaspoon of each dried)
Salt and pepper to taste

With any luck it won't suck, the minions will eat it without too much complaining about the vegetables in it and I can give it a name like Beer Stew (cause I need a liquid dinner tonight), Mommy's Had It (that's why there's wine in there), or if I get creative and throw a bit of pumpkin in there, add a few tweaks to the spices and serve it with a glass of almond milk, it's Pumpkin Spice Latte.

'Tis the season for it anyway!

A while back I decided I wanted to get some nice cushions for the chairs we have the kitchen table.  But when I looked at something I was willing to own I decided the cost was a bit out of my budget.  I'm capable of sewing and have made nice cushions before, so I figured I'd upcycle something.  I ran into a nice matelasse bedspread at the Salvation Army and picked it up for $6, figuring it would make a lovely cover for the cushions.

$39.99/cushion @ Overstock.com.  Cute but pricy!

After bringing anything home second hand (or new for that matter), wash it well.  If you're using new fabric, it's imperative that you wash it to get the sizing out.  New fabric does change its size once washed, so never use unwashed fabric for sewing projects, wash and dry it first!  Once your fabric is washed, iron it and lay it out flat.

Washed, mostly ironed and flat on the floor.

You're going to need some sort of pattern for your chair pads.  If you have square seats you have it easy, just measure the sides.  If they're butt shaped, as mine are, making a pattern is a better idea.  I used some old cardboard cut down to something close to size.  I laid it over the seat and using a sharpie, traced the edge of the seat from the bottom as one of my minions sat on the cardboard.  Minions are useful for so many things.

Butt-shaped template

I looked at the pattern on the bedspread and figured out where the best place to make the cushions was.  I settled on the top edge as there was no big pattern to capture or avoid.



Fold over the top edge of the bedspread far enough to put your cardboard pattern and trace it.  Since we need a top and a bottom for the cushions, we do need two pieces.  If you're using a full or queen size you should have enough room across the top for 4 cushions.

Trace with less wiggly lines than I photo-shopped in - badly.

Pin in the middle of your traced areas for each cushion, then cut them out.  Be sure you're using sharp scissors as the material is thick.  The sharper your scissors, the less likely you'll be to injure yourself, unless you cut your fingers.  Not that I've ever done that...

Once you have them cut out, you're going to need to cut a strip of fabric that is about 2" wide and have about 6-7 yards of it depending on the size of your cushions.(Measure around the edge of your pattern and multiply by 4 or however many chairs you're making for)  These strips are going to be the casing for the piping that will be at the seams making them look all pro.  Also you'll need some piping, which unless you have some thin cotton clothesline handy, you'll need to purchase.  It can be found at nearly anyplace that sells sewing supplies.  I got mine at Jo-Ann's for about 60 cents a yard.  While you're cutting, we're going to need some ties to keep these suckers on the chairs.  My kitties would have them knocked off and dragged in front of the french doors to laze about all day if I didn't.  So cut 9"X1.5" lengths.  You'll want four per chair pad.

Next week, we'll work on the sewing, stuffing and finishing these chair pads.  In the mean time, go forth and shop for the materials and get caught up!  If you want to stay with the upcycling theme, round up some old bed pillows you have, or any other pillows to stuff these with.  And decide if you want to add buttons to the chair pads for decoration, pick those out of your stash of goodies we all have.

See you next Thursday for the thrilling conclusion of the cushions.

It's Wednesday once again and this week I decided on a dress.  A maxi-dress of all things.  Typically I stay away from anything longer than knee length because it tends to make me look shorter.  And when you're already a foot shorter than your king, it starts to look silly unless you wear heels all the time.  Oh wait...I do wear heels all the time.  The dress is so comfortable though, it's made of the softest t-shirt type material known to man.  I'm going to be sad to give to this dress up when it's time has come and gone.

Without the jacket

Anyway, the maxi is from Charlotte Russe, the jacket is a thrift shore find, belt is a Target special and the shoes are Kensie, from DSW.

With the jacket

The messy bun took me about 2 minutes to do.  Put your hair in a pony tail.  Divide the tail into two sections and twist it.  Make a twisted braid.  Band the end and using another rubber band, loop the small end to the larger band you used towards the crown of your head.  Then, with a few bobby pins, haphazardly pin sections of the twist to your head.  Poof, instant messy bun!

What are you all wearing today?