Happy Birthday Jen! and Olin College Open House

Today is my daughter's 19th Birthday! Boy, does time fly. Birthdays can be bittersweet for moms. It's so wonderful to watch our children grow and thrive, but I sometimes miss the little girl.

My youngest daughter and I went to visit Olin College today. They had an open house for prospective women students.

Many people haven't heard of Olin. It is a small engineering school in Needham, Massachusetts, and it has only had three graduating classes. It has an amazing program that emphasizes hands-on, collaborative, real-world projects. It is well-funded with amazing resources. Up until this year every student received a full tuition scholarship, it has been reduced to half for next year - but it's still an amazing deal. The kids leave there with an excellent education preparing them for just about any field they want to go into.

I posted an article yesterday called "Acquiring knitting needles and yarn without spending a lot of money" In these economic times, we need all the help we can get!

Eighteenth Birthday Presents from Etsy

Today's Tip: An average sized scarf equals the height of the person wearing it. Why does this work? Generally people want a scarf that falls about halfway on their body. To get it to fall halfway, the scarf is the same as the height. So, a long scarf would be more than the height, and a short scarf would be less. If you look at the last tip, you'll see that you can get a quick measurement by holding the scarf between your outstretched arms.

Yesterday, August 2, was my daughter's 18th birthday. In addition to her main gift (her own guitar for Guitar Hero, and new programs), I bought her some wonderful gifts from Etsy. I thought about what she can do now that she is 18. She will be able to vote for the first time this year, so I purchased some fun things about voting. I got these two buttons from rvw2005This journal from ivylanedesigns

and this t-shirt from coolchirts

The other thing she can do is buy cigarettes. Although she has no interest in smoking, I thought these charms would be a fun gift. This one came from heartbreakjewelry