I just finished icing 100+ gingerbread cookies and my hands aren't cramping! In the past, I had always been making parchment paper icing cones for my gingerbread cookies. While I think they give me Martha Stewart cred, they also only hold a small amount of icing, get messy and are a general PITA.

I had been looking for better icing option but all the decorating bags you see at most kitchen stores have tips that are way too big for my cookies. Then I happened to be at Michael's and while meandering through their labyrinthine isles I came across their huge cake decorating section featuring all sorts of things Wilton. Including very tiny round tips which turned out quite perfect.

I bought #1 and #2 round tips, tip couplers and disposable 14" bags. Best money spent, ever! I manged to put all my icing into a single bag (usually it would take me 6 parchment cones) and easily replaced the #1 tip with #2 when it proved too tiny. Decorating with this was a joy and very fast.

I've upgraded my recipe page to include the Wilton link and also the amount of spices I've standardized on.

I consume a lot of books.  Most of them are reading to my daughter, but I also read my share of fiction and non-fiction and I'm trying now to keep track of them on goodreads.com.  But unlike some people I know, I'm not really a book horder, almost never re-read a novel and thus like to avoid actually buying books (you know, keeping them trees alive).

If I do need to get a book, I'll look for a deal.  For my online purchases, bookpool.com has great prices for technical books, but mostly I get stuff from Amazon.  Now mater what, I will always check out books on Amazon because I find their user reviews very useful.  And because BookBurro plays nicely with Amazon.

BookBurro, "the book browser companion", is a FireFox browser extension that, among other things, adds a floating window to Amazon.com pages that allows you to see the prices other online stores charge for the book.  No big deal, there are other comparison shopping tool, right?  Well, BookBurro also integrates with WorldCat and lets you see which libraries have copies of that book.  And Austin Public Library happens to use WorldCat!

This is how I end up reading books for free these days:

1. Some book review (on a blog, radio, whatever) piques my interest.
2. I look it up on Amazon.com and check out the reviews
3. I pop open the BookBurro window and it (hopefully) lists APL as having it available
4. I click on the APL link to see which branches have them, and if necessary, request it to be trnsferred to my branche by placing a place a hold on it
   
5. APL notifies me when the book is available for pickup via email

Beside Book Burro, I also use Library Elf to keep notified when my books are due or when my books on hold are available.  APL now send you an email when this happens, but Library Elf also alerts you via an RSS feed.

I have really been appreciating the Austin Public Library of late.  I've had a library card forever but was mostly using it to check out our monthly book group books and the occasional kid's book when Magda was with me.

But there is way more to the library than that and now you can find me there several times a month.  Most branches have book readings for kids.  Sure, most are during the day, but they also have Pajama Storytimes which are at 7pm and perfect for an after-work-before-bed trip.  This fall my library branch went from monthly to every 2nd/4th week and I've been attending most of them with Magda and Kayleigh in tow.  The girls love going and pay good attention to the librarian.  And before going home we usually check out three books for each of them to take with us (that's 12 books/month!).  I usually manage to get them back ontime, though often only by renewing them online.

Library cards are free for residents, so there is no reason not to have and use one.  But I encourage to go for the Austin Library Gold Card and help out with a small donation.