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This delightful collection of short stories was based on Rose Wilder Lane's life as she was growing up. She accurately
described the issues women faced at around the turn of a century, especially that of being an old maid! An old maid if
you're not married by your mid-20's? Wow!

The stories in this book was a combination of humorous and some seriousness. The characters were realistic and seem to come to life for that time period.

I bought my copy at the museum in Mansfield because I always wanted to read Rose's work. This book is a gem. The essay introducing the book is worth getting the book but each story is a gem on its own. Her voice is fresh and rings well today. You would not know she lived in the first half of the 20th century.

I have loaned this book out to 2 people now and all of us are knocked out at how good Rose was. Purchase it, read it. Rose was well known in the early part of last century for good reason. Let's bring this author back to the audience she richly deserves today.

This is a hidden jewel in american literature: a detailed portrait of life before women's right to vote was a federal law, before Margaret Sanger, before Rosie the Riveter. The author survived small town life, and lived to tell and in her own way celebrate it. I will be giving this book to all the tweenager girls I know (and my own daughter when she is old enough!).

This book is wonderful, funny and hearwarming. My great aunt was born in the same era and used to tell me similar stories in this fashion. What a life women had in the olden days, there are not many real life accounts in print that are honest and true. This one is. What a fun book to read.

Rose is just as gripping a writer as her mother, although with a far more adult narrative style.

among our cook club members where we gather together once a week to learn a new dish, whether is a main course or dessert,
after experiecing many other cook books, we find his is always the most clearly written, easy to understand and to follow.
i wish he writes a few more cook book.
i buy it for friends to like desserts during the holidays ,and it is always so much appreciated :)

Desserts that come from one of the best restraunteers around. Unbelieveably delicious and satisfying.

Great pictures and recipes that can be used in many different ways. It is a real book for real cooks

I bought this book last year,at first I did not want to try any yet because i don't see the pic how it should come out! Until couple months later, I try with the banana cake recipe which I saw the picture. And that's it, it is simple to follow the explaination and after finish---taste great. I have to try another even I don't see picture but I believe now that it will come out fine.

This is my FAVORITE dessert cookbook. Every single thing I have made from this cookbook has turned out amazing. I love that all the recipes have multiple parts to them so I can choose just to make Banana Bread for Breakfast or I can make White Chocolate Banana Bread Pudding with Caramel Semi Fredo and Boozy Caramel Sauce (my favorite recipie so far) for a dinner party. The cookbook also gives beautiful pictures and lots of details to make sure that you do it right. Be careful though- I am now the required to make the dessert every Thanksgiving!

I ordered this book because i have three kids, ages 6, 9 and 12. Homework, piano lessons, soccer, play dates, and two working parents left us breathless and our house never clean. I used this book to set up charts for every day of the week with chores and events for me and my kids. For a month now, we check the charts every day as soon as we come home from school, and all the homework and chores and practices get done!! It's amazing. I am NOT an organized person, and this book helped me to get it together. I still have a lot to do, but now I know it's getting done. The reason I didn't give it five stars: it's a bit outdated. There are lots of online resources now that weren't available when it was published. A new edition is necessary for those of us who rely on the web.

I found this book to be extremely thorough on the subject of organizing a family's schedule, as well as easy enough to read in a short time. I liked the numerous tables and figures illustrating exactly how to do specific tasks.

Suggested websites and prices of various things were extremely helpful! I really liked this book a great deal and would highly recommend it!

Organize Your Family's Schedule In No Time (In No Time) by Valentina Sgro is an unusual 'organize your life' guide, as it helps you organize your life by showing the many options you have to make day-to-day living more productive and a little less stressful. Sgro says "You're welcome to read this book from cover to cover...but what we really want you to do is to use this book to improve your family's life." She suggests that you read the sections that apply to your family circumstances before making any decisions on your next move. I found "Dealing with the Necessities of Life", particularly helpful. It shows how becoming more efficient can result in adding hours of quality time to your family's life. Moms (and dads) with preschool children with will welcome "Managing the Preschool Years", some of the author's idea are so unique, your youngsters will look forward to doing their chores. The sidebar notes, cautions and tips in this book contain useful information and are to the point. Ms. Sgro shows you how to make a schedule/calendar that will work for every member of the house. You will find diagrams, various calendars, suggested products along with the cost and website.

What I really like about author is that she suggests that you consider your family members' body clocks and personalities when creating schedules.

Recommended.

Vannie(~.~)
Work & Family @ BellaOnline.com
http://www.bellaonline.com/Site/workandfamily

As a mom with 3 children between the ages 2 and 4, I thought I was organized. When I read Ms. Sgro's book, I entered a whole new level of organization! Life has gotten simpler and more less stressful by implementing her ideas. My wish list for the holidays includes a PDA - something I never thought I could keep updated. The book identified easy and straightforward techniques that explained the benefits and features. Thanks for helping make my life a whole lot more organized!

Help has finally arrived! Any family, no matter its size, stage of life or composition, can find assistance in getting life more organized and under control! Ms. Sgro's book is readable, helpful and loaded with useful features like checklists, surveys and product suggestions. I particularly like the format that permits the reader to jump around to the section that is needed, such as the holiday chapter or the celebration section. This book presents a "doable" approach, even for people who claim to have little or no organizational skills. It is also helpful to have products illustrated, priced and able to be located without wasting valuable time! This is a great find!

Victoria Cope's family gets a home child, Marianna Wilson, to help around the house, with Vic's mother carrying a baby and all that. Marianna and Victoria find out where Marianna's brother Jasper is and about him being treated very unfairly by a mean villain, Carl Stone. Before you know it, the whole Cope family is trying their very hardest to save Jasper, to be able to have him in the friendly Cope household. Read this book to find out if they save him and their great adventure hiding him illegally from family outsider.

Orphan at my Door is one of the greatest books of all time.

This was an amazing book! Definately one of the best Dear Canada books. I read it in one day, but the only reason was because I started it in the morning and read it until 1 o'clock in the morning! It was a totally amazing book! Just WOW

My daughter and I were caught up in the suspense, the hopes, the tears. What a beautiful book, again, from Jean Little. My daughter (almost 8) says it is the book ever, and she wants to start back at the beginning and hear it again.

This book is one of the Dear Canada series, which are historical novels, written in diary format, about fictional girls during different periods of Canadian history.

Victoria Cope, who lives in the town of Guelph, Ontario, begins her diary on her eleventh birthday. Because her mother is unwell, her father decides the family will take in a Home Child, an orphan from England, to help with the housework. The girl who joins their household is a small, quiet twelve-year-old named Mary Anna Wilson. Through Victoria's diary, we learn of Mary Anna's plight -- her mother died, and she has been separated from her younger brother and sister. Victoria also tells of the daily life for a young girl in Canada in 1897 and her decision to try and help Mary Anna find her family.

This was the first book I read in the Dear Canada series and I loved it. It was very well written and keep me interested the entire time. The characters of Victoria and Mary Anna were very realistic and likable, and their stories showed how very different life was for rich children and poor children in the late 1800s. This book is still one of my favorites from the series and I'd highly recommend it to young readers who enjoy historical fiction in diary format.

I was enchanted by the ideas in this helpful and instructive guide to painting gnome houses from rocks you can find in your yard. I showed the book to my crafty ladies group and I had to order 3 more. There are such darling villages and imaginative scenes that are shown in this book,that your imagine just explodes with new ideas of your own. I hightly recommend this book for making something out of nothing!

Lots of great ideas of rock to houses. Cute & warm samples.

I'm very satisfied with the books i've bought.
They are very instructive and complete.
They teach the reader to paint rocks step by step, allowing consisting apprenticeship.

I love the book. It is filled with ideas that will keep me busy for a long time. We enjoy our yard and garden so making these little houses, cottages, and towns will be fun to add to our stepables garden. So thanks Lin for being so creative and for sharing your ideas with others like me.

This is a well written and very specific guide to painting houses on rocks. It is beautifully illustrated and offers very specific, understandable and do-able instructions. It is not possible to read this book without feeling encouraged and motivated to get going.

This book is wonderful, I can pick plants for my garden in northern Minnesota with ease. It tells me when to plant, where to plant, it has wonderful pictures, easy to read, I would recommend it to any gardener, but really good for the beginner. I bought one for my friend.

This is a good guide to perennials to grow in Minnesota. My only issue is that it is too predictable. There are many more perennials that are native to the Minnesota/Wisconsin area and are not as well known. A little more research on the part of the authors would have been appreciated. There are many beautiful plants that need to be discovered. I suggest visiting a couple of web site that sell native plants. (My own favorite is Prairie Moon Nursery.)

I got into flower gardening three years ago and got this book. I barely knew the difference between a perennial and an annual at the time. It has been invaluable in helping me choose perennials for certain sites in my yard, as well as suggesting particular cultivars based on color, growth habit, etc. I also appreciate the extra information on continuing to care for the plants I choose, particularly about pruning, dead heading, and dividing.

I liked this book more than several others I have because there are no illustrations--only beautiful, full-color photos. I don't think an illustration is very helpful when trying to picture a new plant in my yard.

One criticism I have is that there are very few pictures that show the entire plant. Usually there is a close up of the leaves or blooms. I would appreciate being able to see what the plant would look like from farther away. I have the same complaint about perennial catalogs and websites, though, too.

My yard looks beautiful and I have gained a lot of confidence as a new flower gardener thanks in large part to this book. I would purchase an updated version should the author write one in the future.

Not as good as Melinda Meyers book, but a good resource for backyard gardeners nonetheless.

This book is very user-friendly and full of helpful information for the amateur gardener, which I am. It is laid out in a very helpful manner and gives much information about each plant discussed, including personal experiences of the author with various perennials. It is filled with lovely color photographs of all the plants, as well as text about each one in alphabetical order. I would recommend it for anyone interested in learning about perennials that work in the climates of Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Super ideas. This book gave me a whole new look on scrapbooking. It really changed my approach. No more guilt about being "behind". Very addaptable too. If you don't like an idea, just tweak it to suit you.

Stacy Julian has changed my life when it comes to scrapbooking. Her whole Simple Scrapbooks philosophy is what has kept me interested in the hobby and her earlier book, Big Picture Scrapbooking, is awesome as well. I read that one first and it taught me how to look at the overall purpose of scrapbooking and that it is the everyday moments and relationships that we will want to remember 25 years from now, as opposed to looking at huge volumes of birthdays and Christmas pics from every single year of our lives. At first I thought I would not need to read Photo Freedom since she references her "Library of Memories" system to photo organization in Big Picture, but eventually I wanted more of her insight. I ordered the book and read the whole thing in three days. It really made sense to me and I now follow her system almost exactly. She thoroughly explains every single thing she does and names the brand names of the products she uses and then shares how at least ten other women have modified her system to their own style. She not only explains what she does with prints, she also shows how she organizes all her pics on her computer, which I am now doing exactly like her. It really makes sense. As an added bonus, she appears on the TV show "Scrapbook Memories" on PBS every day at the beginning and talks about her ideas on the two books and demonstrates with her personal pics and albums.

Stacy Julian's scrapbooking philosophy, first laid out in Big Picture Scrapbooking, is simple: It's not about getting it done. It's about telling the stories. That makes a lot of sense to me, even though I spent many years trying to "catch up." I finally realized that you'll never be caught up unless you stop taking pictures, which I don't recommend.

In her second book, Stacy goes on to describe, very specifically, the organizational system that allows her to tell the stories, rather than just scrapbook her pictures. She calls her system the "Library of Memories." She has several stages she takes her photos through after they're developed, including sliding them into storage binders (regular slide-in photo albums), sorting them into category drawers (for photos sorted by a variety of categories), library albums (for completed layouts), a memorabilia file (for those bits and pieces of life you want to save but often aren't sure what you want to do with), and (she's not done yet!) cold storage (photos you have no plans to scrap soon but don't want to toss) and square punch drawers (she punches faces out of photos she'd otherwise throw away, and often uses them for mini books and the like).

Using these strategies for sorting her photos, Stacy is able to make connections between photos that she would never see if she scrapped chronologically. You might find photos of your son on his birthday every year, and put together a "through the years" page. Or perhaps you find you've taken a photo of the kids in front of the house every year on the first day of school--these make a perfect mini book that shows how they've grown, how their first-day fashions have changed, and even what lunchboxes were en vogue.

The great thing about this approach, when you're freed from chronological scrapbooking, is that you can see patterns and relationships that wouldn't be obvious if you were just trying to get "caught up." Stacy gives a host of examples from her own scrapbooks, as well as short interviews with others who have adopted the "Library of Memories" approach. I found the idea both inspiring and stress-relieving; I can tell my stories simply and easily, without pressure! What a great gift. I know this is a book I'll refer to again and again as I begin to create my own Library of Memories.

Great ideas! I really enjoyed reading this book. I often look back and enjoy the pictures and ideas for inspiration. Her organization method is very inspiring. Even if you don't use her whole approach, there is something that everyone can take from her ideas.

I'm not sure what I expected, but I guess it was a way to sort through my photos and get them onto pages quickly and easily. This book didn't really do that for me. First, I do digital scrapbooking, and this book definitely does not; the author prints her photos before she can even think about a page and I tend to print finished pages. Her system includes different files boxes for different types of photos, organized around different themes, and that is hard to do on a computer. That being said, I did use many of her ideas to attach additional keywords to my photos in Photoshop that went way beyond what I was doing before, and that has helped enormously in coming up with pages. I also loved her ideas of different types of albums, and not worrying about doing things chronologically, which has given me a long list of albums and pages I want to do. Although her concept of tossing negatives into a bin in case of emergency concerns me greatly, the the book was well worth the price - just not in the way I expected.

Two sisters, lovingly and effectively caring for their mother, have provided a vast storehouse of guidelines in 82 pages. From the resources to the "Caregiving Caplets" the changes they saw in their mother are invaluable for others with Alzheimer's. This is a hour by hour account, full of honesty, searching, and committment... a major contribution to the field.

"What do I do now?" is often the painful question posed by families and caregivers faced with the evidence of a decline in the mental, emotional and physcial capacity of a loved one. The deeply inspiring telling of the story of this family will help others find ways to answer that question. It is beautifully written with a sensitive understanding of a mother slowing losing herself to a dreaded disease. The Caregiving Caplets provide easily understood suggestions for coping with the disease while attempting to maintain the dignity of the loved one. I highly recommend this practical and heartwarming book!

An outstanding true story of a loving family whose mother suffered with
Alzheimer's disease. Daughters tell of many difficult situations as well as tender moments they shared with their mother. Caregiving Caplets give practical hints that will help others as they relate to someone with this disease. I immediately ordered five copies to share with family members and friends who are coping with victims of Alzheimer's. MLH

Three tools in the book prepare Alzheimer's caregivers for their own difficult journey. (1) The poetry demonstrates a prepared family's plan to adapt to specific patient changes. (2) The comprehensive lists of expected patient changes and (3) the matching lists of needed caregiver adaptations guide families in developing their own response plan. I have been close to three families while they made the long Alzheimer's journey. I recall how they were surprised when they encountered the patient changes described in this book. I also recall their frustrations in dealing with those changes. Knowing beforehand what to expect prepares caregivers to plan their own responses rather than reacting out of raw feelings. I bought a copy to give to a family beginning the journey.

Many folks don't have an understanding of how to preserve the dignity of their loved one in this condition. The many suggestions in this book provide that understanding. The poetry in each chapter makes such a sensitive, caring response to the Alzheimer's patient. The book is full of depth, insight, and understanding - said in simple and practical ways!

This my first introduction to Garrison Keillor and I've since never missed an piece of work by him. How I laughed to "O Captain, My Captain" and "Tomato Butt"!! And of course, the memorable "Casey at Bat". It's wonderful to listen to over and over. You would not go wrong purchasing this item, nor buying any of his works! Highest Recommendations!

Garrison keeler is at his best when he is telling these stories which he is best known for. Radio shows are way before my time and this was sort of an "acquired taste" for me. Now I can't get enough of him. I can listen to this over and over. It is very comforting and, as others have said, excellent on the road!

I love Prarie Home and Garrison, and this is a great collection. However, it is all music and Tales from Lake Wobegon - none of the other sketches or comedy routines I was hoping for. So, no complaints about what's on the four CDs - just complaints about what's not! I will try one of the other anniversary collections!

Color me displeased. I bought this for Julia, Lover's Waltz, Pioneer Waltz and some other items from my cassette and lo and behold they have been removed from this package. I still give it 5 stars overall because it is PHC but this is a warning for others. Ok, I am editing this as I just noticed a change... They added a table of contents... FROM THE TAPE. Removing content from one edition to another and then advertising the earlier more complete edition makes this just plain wrong.

I had this set on cassette long ago and recently replaced it with a set on CD from amazon.com. I enjoy A Prairie Home Companion and enjoyed listening to the rest of the humor and music in this set, but the reason I bought a second set is for a Peter Ostroushko composition called "Pioneer Waltz" which is so beautiful it literally moves me to tears.

The same composition appears on another Peter Ostroushko CD, but this version is significant superior. Incredible music, easily worth the price of this set and then some. I've never heard anything like it. It is a profound work of art.

Good Book, Got alot Out of it

This, Along with Los Angeles Spanish Classes,
Los Angeles Spanish Lessons,
Los Angeles Language Classes, Helped me alot

This is a perfect book for 2nd & 3rd graders. As a mother of ten, I have found it to be gentle and delightful in its content and format, but a challenge for my children. The expectations for amount of copywork and dictation, as well as memorization of poetry is quite high, but not inappropriate. My children find a great sense of accomplishment when finishing these lessons. I am pleased with the variable content which includes the aforementioned disciplines as well as picture and literary narration, grammar, beginning composition, and word usage. The choices for art and poetry are especially nostalgic and beautiful. It was a wonderful surprise to find so much inside one little book.

My ds (10 y.o.) started using this book in August of this year (2007). He's on lesson 45 now, and I am very pleased. His spelling, punctuation, caps and other basic knowledge of grammar have improved immensely! His writing has become more expressive and enjoyable to read. He is able to use this book for independent learning. The only times he needs me are to read aloud dictation lessons, to listen to his recitation of memorization lessons, and to mark mistakes on his finished paper so he can make corrections. He used to "hate" writing, but now it is his favorite subject...never thought I'd hear that from him! The lessons start out short in the beginning, but gradually get longer. If you have a reluctant writer and aren't sure how to teach grammar, give this book a try!

The book is hard bound, very sturdy...nicely made. I went for the "free shipping" option with Amazon, since I was getting the second book of this series also. I was a little nervous when I saw the projected shipping date, but Amazon actually shipped book 1 out the same day I ordered, so that I had it the next day! The other book followed a few days later. A great experience all around!

This is a great resource for homeschooling language. It contains many poems and written exercises as well as classic art pieces for the children to be exposed to. The lessons are short and easily done in 30 minutes or so. Great tool to supplement traditional language lessons.

This is a great book for second and third graders. It is very economical. It is nonconsummable to be reusued with other students later. I went through and made a schedule for myself and I did end up skipping a few lessons. Most of those lessons were observation or discussion lessons where questions were asked about certain flowers or birds that we were unfamiliar with. I would have had to have done some research first to complete these lessons. But don't let that deter you. The approach is wonderful and I am sure my son will learn a lot from this book. I have been the tradition text book mom before so I am excited to use this more gentle approach to grammar and language.