Hi there. I hope you have had a great week. Today is Emma’s birthday! I’m so excited for everything this year has in store for Emma as she welcomes a new baby, works on a novel and kicks ass at food blogging (as always!). We all love you so much, Emma!!
Here’s an AI generated image I made (birthday theme). I’d love to hear your thoughts on AI and any positive experiences you’ve had with it so far. I’m curiously optimistic for what it can mean for the future of pretty much any industry. I’ve been using Midjourney for about two years and I don’t think I’ve ever shared anything from it before. The main thing I’ve used it for so far is visualizing characters and settings for my writing project, which has been so much fun.
Here’s 10 Things I am loving this week!
1. My daughter, Nova, is selling Girl Scout Cookies. It’s her first year and she is very excited.
2. I am currently re-reading The Night Circus because I wanted to see it it was as good as I remembered. It is!
3. It’s almost Lunar New Year, which begins on February 10th. I’m getting these red envelopes with chocolate coins for my girls and their classmates.
4. I want to buy a Gramophone, for our next record player. I’m leaning toward a new one that can play modern records, but the antique ones are really cool too. Let me know if you have any tips or experiences!
5. We’re currently reading Harry Potter and my kids are obsessed with the MinaLima edition which has cute pop up pages. There are only three volumes out, so by book four we will probably switch to the illustrated versions (which are also so wonderful). If your kids have been through a Harry Potter era please give me ALL the tips for making it the most magical- I’m very excited!
6. I’ve used these gold stick on hooks absolutely everywhere in our home. From hanging jewelry to hand towels to purses and hats and so many other small things.
7. This blanket looks so so cozy.
8. Planning to read The Dead Romantics this week (for our podcast book club!).
9. Currently drinking Sleepytime Peach Tea. It’s the best.
10. Here’s some cute valentine’s day ideas.
Here are some recent blog posts we are really proud of:
- Food: Butternut Squash Soup, Tiramisu, Birthday Cake Pops.
- Drinks: Bee’s Knees Cocktail, Paper Plane Cocktail, Paloma Cocktail, Birthday Cake Shot
- Kiddo Stuff: 105 Would You Rather Questions for Kids, Free Chore Chart for Kids
- And here’s all our recent blog posts.
I’m happy we live in an age of online cookie sales because the Girl Scouts around here don’t start selling until spring and I always have cookie FOMO if I don’t get some earlier than that.
Also, LOVE The Night Circus! I only read it within the last couple years because a friend said it was her favorite book and honestly why had I not read it before?? SO GOOD
AI makes me nervous, especially because I’ve heard that artists who the AI learn from are not compensated. Also, maybe it’s old school but I’ve been wary for a long time of the generation of very realistic picture and video. I think it has a lot of potential to be used as propaganda, etc, and that scares me. I’m in grad school right now and there is a lot of debate about AI and fear that folks will use AI instead of putting in the work for their degrees, or use AI to cheat. Personally I’m not very tech savvy and don’t use it at all.
Have you and your kids read the Artemis Fowl books? Very fun and Harry Potter-esque. My dad read them to us as a kid and I loved them.
I purchased a reproduction gramaphone when we lived overseas! I loved the look and the sound of it… but hated that I couldn’t control the volume. It was LOUD. I wound up selling it before we moved back to the States.
But sometimes I wish I kept it just for the vibes. ;P
I’ve owned The Night Circus for ages now and STILL haven’t read it! I feel like this is a sign to make it my next book, because I’ve only heard good things about it!
It’s one of my favorite books ever :)) I hope you enjoy it!
Oh my – I’ve been a Girl Scout mom since 1st grade and a troop leader since 2nd grade! My daughter is now in 9th grade and we will be starting cookie sales on the 29th! I will have to buy a couple of boxes from Nova since you have the other baker’s cookies. I hope you and Nova enjoy the experience as much as we have! My daughter and I just helped with our Cookie Rally this morning and working with the Daisies and Brownies is the best!! Good luck Nova!
Happy birthday, Emma! I have gleaned so much from your wisdom and wish you more learning, great reads, and fun cooks and bakes on this turn around the sun.
Elsie, I used to be a middle school (and one year of elementary) teacher and read pretty much every class I ever taught a Harry Potter novel. We had so much fun with it. I always tried really hard to act in character while doing read-alouds. The last year I did it, my co-teachers and I themed our year around it. We sorted the kids into houses, kept track of house points, and had end of the year activities themed around it. We had a taste test for Bertie Bott’s every flavor beans, themed treats (house colors chocolate pretzel wands, cupcakes, all kinds of stuff), a Harry Potter jeopardy kind of game, a scavenger hunt, and did all kinds of other activities throughout the year. It was so much fun. I’m hoping to have some little ones and hope I get to create so many magical Harry Potter memories with them.
Hi Elsie, I worked in TTS AI voice for five years. I was the voice of the first AIs that could cry and flirt. While I’m surprisingly not a big fan of AI and have not used it, beyond when Lensa dropped last year, I am okay with people using it as long as the artists whose work the LLMs (large language models) are trained on are compensated fairly and their consent has been given. I currently see that as the biggest issue with the field. I just read an article in The Guardian, I live in London, today about Midjourney and several other image generator tech companies that trained on artists’ work without their consent or compensation: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/21/we-need-to-come-together-british-artists-team-up-to-fight-ai-image-generating-software Not meant as a call out but just wanted to share as my skill set is super niche. I pretty rarely get to share my opinion on this. I’m a big fan of the blog and do think there can be some big benefits to AI, even if I’m not particularly a fan, just think that there need to be safeguards and compensation/consent in place. Thank you for sharing how you’ve used it <3
Hi! Your opinion is definitely welcome *especially* as someone with experience in the field. Thanks for sharing.