Organizing Your Days

Back in the day when I worked at Alea, (shiver) I can remember all of the managers walking around with their composition books and pens and making sure to write all of the tasks they were to complete in their not-so-distant future. I am quite certain that in today's society with the use of tablets & cell phones, that they would actually replace the composition note books.   And I am also quite certain that this just didn't happen at Alea.

Lately since my worker has deferred me from working for now, because of all of my current health issues. I have been thinking about how in the heck can I get my life in order?  Or am I damned for life to being so unorganized.  Some people will argue with me if they have seen my studio that I am organized, but not really.  All they see are shoe boxes full of stuff and each box is alphabetized, but I have baskets and bins building up again of things that need to go in to those boxes.

I also have so much going on that I can't seem to focus on any one thing for too long so what little work I do, does not feel like I  have accomplished much at all. Since I probably have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) which basically means that you have a short attention span, I can't stand to be working one thing for too long.

Here are some things I NEED to accomplish some day:

1)  Organize and Name all photos in my computer (this is to the tune of THOUSANDS of photos, literally)  I need HUGE help in this area!

2)  Organize and file paper work so that we can finally get caught up on our taxes once and for all, and here were talking about bins and bins of paperwork that need to be sorted.

3)  I have a kazillion (how much is a kazillion anyway?) art projects I want to do but can't seem to figure how to just sit down and focus on doing them.  This includes getting things made for all of the Christmas Crafts shows going on at the Public Schools locally at Christmas time.

4)  I also have to purge a kazillion things in my house such as things that have been left lying around for 3 years that we have not even touched!

and the list goes on and on and on, so you see, nothing is really urgent, but everything is really urgent.  Because when Abby and I first met, one of the very first things she taught me was, to eliminate stress where ever possible!  How did everything in my house get so stressful?

Well the good news is, today we finally purged the three kitchen cutlery drawers. There is actually a box of stuff that will be dropped off in the free section at the local recycle station.  So that is a good start.  We only have the rest of the kitchen and the rest of the house to do!

I brought this topic up with a friend last night.  Her suggestions were ideas that I have heard before.  She even looked up appointment schedule samples to see what I could possibly do to help me here.  I even spent some time looking in the playstore app on my phone to see what kind of organizational apps I could find but I was just wasting my time there.  Thank you miss bonnie for letting me pick your brain on that one, if your still reading lol.

So what I did today as a trial, I just pulled out a 3 hole ring bound book with lined paper in it and just wrote down times of the day and what I did in those times.  I will do this for a few days, just so I can look back and see how I have been spending my time.  This will also help me to become friends with my penmanship, which sucks...lol

If you want to leave a comment below on how you organize your days, or to give me tips and ideas about what you do, that would be great....as my brother in law always says, catch you on the flip side!

Barefoot in the kitchen

And, NO I am NOT pregnant...never have been and never will be!  I am talking about cooking.  Do you like to cook?  Are you spoiled and get to have someone clean up after you make a mess in your kitchen?  Or are you just someone who would rather gobble everything all up and clean up for the person who cooked for you?

I am a mixed emotions of all of the above.  I have to cook sometimes I don't want to.  Sometimes I LOVE to and sometimes I HATE to.  I mostly hate cleaning up afterwards which I have to do far too many times.  From time to time, its nice to go out to a restaurant and get spoiled so that I don't have to cook OR clean up, but I am getting tired of having to do both all of the time.  Especially when I have the mind set that when ever anyone ever cooks for me, they certainly don't have to do the dishes after.

But don't you just love it when you can take something out of the freezer the night before and not have anything in mind for it.  And the next day comes along and you just do what comes naturally.  Like today for example; last night I took a pork roast out of the freezer...and this afternoon I automatically took it out of the wrap and just popped it into the smaller slow cooker, using just a box of that vegetable liquid broth.  I didn't put anything else for flavouring in it.  It cooked for a handful of hours, and I was going to put potatoes and carrots in with it, but decided the slow cooker was too small for all of those veggies, so I did them in separate pots on my gas stove top.

Then, as they were cooking, I decided to make the gravy in the juices of what was in the slow cooker, right in the slow cooker, just like I did the last time I made gravy, when I cooked the little turkey we had acquired after Christmas.  It actually does quite a nice job.  It was not that long ago that making gravy actually intimidated me.  But my brother in law taught me how to make gravy, and my good friend Maureen before that, and my mother before that but I could never really figure it out, but I got a handle on it, now....

Anyway, I absolutely LOVE it when an unplanned plan comes together.  At first I thought the pork was simmering for too long, but it came out just perfect, and so did the gravy, it was a tad bland, but nothing a bit of salt and pepper wouldn't fix. I also baked a chocolate cake earlier today and Abby is making the jello pudding topping for it now as we speak...this will be interesting, as we didn't have any cherry jello, nor did we have any chocolate pudding, but we did have raspberry jello and we did have butterscotch pudding.  So instead of having chocolate jello pudding cake, we are having chocolate raspberry butterscotch pudding cake.  YUM it sounds deslish!  Happy Cooking everyone.

Zion United Church

Today I think the whole world must have moved because we actually went to church this morning.  I have been wanting to go for a while now, because for some strange reason, it has been heavy in my heart to want to go and maybe participate in a choir.  I also miss the socializing with friends and really wish I had a better interaction with my immediate family.  But no one seems interested in being close except for my Mom and my Dad.

Last summer we actually dropped into the Zion United Church in Sundridge for a rummage sale one Saturday when we were out yard sale hopping.  We went in, and a very tall woman greeted us quite warmly as did the other ladies that were working there that day.  We purchased a few things, and we were happy to see some friendly faces.  We left but not before they invited us to come to their Sunday service.

Which never happened for almost a full year!  Which brings us to, today.  We got up, Abby had to use the snow blower out on the driveway today for a bit, after it snowed almost the entire day up here yesterday.  We had breakfast and then headed on up to Sundridge.  It was almost over whelming to see so many people so happy to see us.  The very tall woman was the first to spot us, and she practically fell over running to come and greet us and give us each a hug.  It was so cute.

Many people approached us both before and after the service.  After service there was coffee and some treats downstairs and a chance to sit around and chat with some of the people that came to greet us before the service.  Its amazing what happens when "new blood" arrives.  lol  I would definitely go back.  I want to join their choir.  I spoke to a lady who also runs a community choir which I am also feeling so inclined to investigate.  I recognized this woman she looked very familiar as I thought maybe I went to high school with her, but once I heard her name it didn't even ring a bell.  I guess maybe she is someone's doppleganger or something, I don't know...but regardless it was nice to meet her and the other people we met there too.

I did not go for a walk today, because for some reason we just came home from church, and I spent some time in my studio, yesterday though, I went for a half hour walk, and also spent a lot of time painting this painting.

I cannot decide if this painting is finished or not...I struggled with this tree almost as much as I did in my winter creek painting.

But considering that the tree in the painting with the creek is my first ever hand drawn, water colour painted tree, and the one with the red barn, is my second ever hand drawn water colour painted tree, I guess I can't be too hard on myself.

I also decided at the last minute to join a rainbow ATC in ATC 4artsake group on Facebook which I didn't win, but oh well.... here is what I kind of threw together.

The background is actually made from a box of red dye that I had made a couple of years ago...I dunked the ATC into the red dye liquid and that was how it came out.  I kind of like the splattered look of it.  I then glued on the patch, and distressed the edges of the card with Tim Holtz distress ink, Fired Brick.

I also made my best friend and only seester her 50th birthday card.  I hope she will like it.  Of course, I won't post it here in case she reads my daily blogs.

Only two more days of January left....so cray cray, where does the time go?

Catch you tomorrow!

My Red Barn

Here is what have accomplished so far after spending hours on it today.  So far so good.  It's amazing at how relaxed I am painting with water colour paints. Loving it.  

I also have been for a walk to the end of wooden bridge road and back.  I actually physically counted 1700 steps and that was just one way!  

Here are a  couple of photos for you.  I absolutely love living here.  Winter, mosquitoes and everything!

Valentine Card & a Walk

I was feeling pretty good this morning so I was up and we had our oatmeal for breakfast and played some crazy 8's.  Abby took off for her appointment and I headed on down to my studio.  I was ambitious to work on a few projects today as the time is ticking on some due dates.  Here is the Valentines greeting card I made for my friend Carmen. I hope that she will like it.

I also still intend to start painting my barn yet, the night is still quite you but I have no energy left.  After I walked up to the Bizzy Book Bin which is almost all of the way to Emsdale which was a 4.9 km walk.  So I walked just over a mile today.  I exercised but my hips are screaming at me and I am exhausted.

Catch you all tomorrow. 

My Red Barn

A very dear friend of mine posted this photo as her profile photo on Facebook and oh boy did it ever call my name to attempt to paint it.

Isn't it just beautiful?  I can only hope that my beginner skills of water colour painting won't shame this incredible photo.  Here is what I have done so far.  I actually drew this by hand, its not too bad, at least I can live with it for now.

Then I scribbled the entire back of the drawing in pencil, so that I could trace it onto water colour paper.  I can use this drawing over and over and over in the future if I wanted to. 

Then I attached the scribbled side under, on top of the water colour paper and traced the composition so that it would transfer over to the water colour paper. Such a cool trick!

and, I can hardly wait to paint this.  Stay tuned to see it when its finished, and folks, that is a wrap for today, I am off to bed...catch you tomorrow!

P.S.  We had a lovely lupper at my brothers' cabin in the bush today, hence the reason I didn't get anything else done.  We had Potatoes, Carrots and Parsnips, and tortierre, with a lovely apple type of pastry for desert....was so good and was nice to have a break from cooking....Thanks guys, hope we can do it again soon.

Today's Art Class

We both had a hard time waking up and getting going this morning.  However we got up, had our usual oatmeal for breakfast made our coffee to go and headed out the door.  We were both heading up to South River this morning, me for my water colour art class and Abby had a customer to go and see.

Here is what I did in my class this morning.  First I had to pain-stakingly draw the Canalilies.  I started to stress out because I don't like to draw in public.  I only draw alone in my studio at home.  And then I can show off what I like.  But my teacher and my fellow class mate didn't want me stressing out so the teacher helped me to draw this line for line.

Pretty amazing huh?  Sometimes I impress even myself!  Thanks to my new friend I was able to get through this stress free.  We even got to start painting it today.  And this is what I have so far.  Apparently we are going to be adding to it and layering and a bunch of other cool stuff to it too.  I can't wait to see it finished.

Stay tuned for upcoming photo's to see what I did in the first 9 classes of Water Colour painting.

Karma vs Good vs Bad

Do you believe in Karma?  What is Karma anyway?  Well, according to Wikipedia, it says that...

Karma (Sanskrit: कर्म; IPA: [ˈkərmə] ( listen); Pali: kamma) means action, work or deed; it also refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect).

What does this mean?   Well, I think it means how people treat others will get what is deserved in return whether it be good, or bad.

I like to think that both Abby and I are good people and we both try to help others where ever we can.  But for some reason, we have been having our turn at a round of negative things happening to us.

Let me see, we had to get the muffler in the car fixed, and as well we had to get 2 new belts so that we can be prepared should our A/C fail.  Thats what happened in our previous car, and it eventually killed the car because we were not on top of it. 

Then we had a leak in the dining room window of our house with the January melt that we have been having.  After that, I was washing a load of clothes in our new washer/spin dryer, and the load went off balance, and danced around the back hall until the pipe came off of the tap, and water went EVERYWHERE!

And then the very next thing that happened was, last week I went and defrosted my small turkey that I had in the freezer, and made stuffing for it and everything, and went to put the oven on, and the dang oven would not come on.  Well great what was I supposed to do with the turkey?  Thank goodness it was a small one and it fit into my slow cooker.

I'm almost done, the next thing that happened, is that Abby got a call from her work today letting her go.  There have been many things going on there that should never happen, and one of them was that the residences were actually beating on their staff...which is totally wrong, and unacceptable, especially when the staff is not paid well enough to deal with those scenarios.  But anyway its all for the best, she will be looking for something maybe in retirement homes, or maybe Comm living, but we shall see.

And the last thing that happened, was I was in Huntsville shopping today, I went to the Dollar store, and when I came out, and dug for my keys deep in all of my pockets but they were no where to be found!  I began to panic, as it was the only key to the car that we have...and because it was going to cost us 250 to get a new one, or a second one, we haven't bothered, but you can imagine that panic was setting in!   I went back into Dollarama asked if someone turned keys in, she said no, I went to the store next door and asked the same question, the answer was no. I started to trace my steps from the car to Dollarama and began to walk up and down all of the aisles, but the cashier called me over and was dangling my keys because a really nice gentleman turned them in...OMG what a relief I tell you.  And the funny thing is, this is the second time in 12 years that this same thing happened to me, and both times, I was lucky to get my keys back, the first time was at the Dollar Tree in Woodbridge.

Whew!  I am pretty much done with negative Nancy's happening to us.  Sooo done, I tell you!  Time to turn a new leaf!  But now as the gentleman to returned my keys to the cashier said, our luck is changing because he found my keys and I got them back without any further hassle.  So, I am putting it out there, time for happy and positive things to happen!!!

As far as doing any art today, that has not happened yet.  However, when I was in Huntsville, I had some time to kill, so I went to the Community Centre they call The Summit, and walked 8 times around the track.  This took me about 40 minutes. This track is actually indoors around the top of the skating rink.  If you walk 5 times around the track its 1km, and if you walk 8 times around the track is 1 mile, and its free to do so.  I met a really nice older lady there, she was a sweet heart.  She told me that she went to the Bracebridge centre where her husband goes swimming, and they charge you 6.00 to walk around their track. Crazy, eh?  So anyway, I felt pretty good about doing my walk today.

Finally the last thing I want to share for today, is that I at last made my home made pea soup, so I am going to end this blog by saying that its calling my name and that I am going to go and have some!  Have a great night, everyone and I will be back tomorrow afternoon when I am finished my art class!

An Ok Art Day

This morning started off well, I made breakfast of French Toast. We then went for a walk to the end of Wooden Bridge Road.  This is a beautiful walk, which take almost a half hour.  

This is the second time we have done it together this year.  That hill is so hard on me, my hips and my lower back were screaming at me by the time we got home.  But I felt good because of it though.

Then after lunch I hand drew two of these scene cards.  Even though I been taking a Water Colour Art Class up in South River, I decided to use my copics to colour it in.  And I used liquid paper for the snow! 

These are for a swap, on Swap Bot, since the theme for this swap is January Hand Drawn, I decided to embellish it just a little with some cool letters I got for Christmas.   I love these letters even though they can be a little tricky to pull the backs off of them lol.  I think it looks finished now.  

The project below I started last night. All it is are a whole bunch of different kinds of hearts stuck and glued on to a piece of card stock.  I know it looks busy, but maybe I will be able to get my friend to send me some black shaped cupids, unless any one has any other ideas...lol

I had a chance to figure out what to do with the heart cards.  I found 3 of those cupids, and slapped them on with mod podge. I am satisfied with these.   Need/want more cupids though...lol

And, this has turned out to be better than an ok art day!  I got my 4th Art Heart Challenge done, whoo hooo!!!  A series about hearts is totally incomplete without the LIVE LOVE LAUGH quote....LOVE how this turned out!

Well that is about all for tonight I think, I have been getting a bit of house work done today, too.  There are still about 5 loads of laundry and waiting for the dishwasher to finish up so I can carry on with that.

Have a good night and catch you tomorrow.

!!!3 YEARS AGO TODAY!!!

I almost thought I didn't have anything to blog about, but here its been under my nose all day and it didn't dawn on me until ten minutes to midnight.   We left this lovely modern home which was located right smack in the middle of Brampton. With tons of amenities including a Shoppers with a post office, a grocery store and a beer store!

To live up here in this beautiful mobile trailer home in lovely Northern, Ontario! With no to very minimal amenities.  There is a grocery/liquor less than 10 km South of us, a Timmies 24 km North of us and a liquor and a small grocery store there, too.

The day we moved in, it was -47 degrees, and we had our friends Jacky, Aubrey, Gilbert and Kurt help us load our minivan our car, their cars, our U-Haul truck rental and our travel trailer to Emsdale, Ontario, where the sun rarely shines in the winter time!  But its interesting to know that we have not had any days of winter quite that cold since that year, the coldest its gotten since was maybe -25. And last Christmas was the most amazing thing, we had absolutely NO SNOW, we didn't even get anything substantial until February!

I do not miss city living, city pressure, city stress, city traffic, city pollution, in any way shape or form.  One of my most favourite perks of living North of Boundary Road is that we get 2 years on our plate stickers for the price of one, and we don't have to worry about getting our cards emissions tested!  

Anyway happy 3 years anniversary hon!  

Overnight At The Sleep Clinic

Yesterday afternoon Abby drove us to the West Parry Sound Hospital for my over night at the sleep clinic.  Even made arrangements for us to be able to let Abby stay over too.  We got to Parry Sound early enough to have dinner somewhere but since it was a Friday Night at Dinner time everywhere had too long of a line up there was even a link up at McDonald's.  

So once we were fed up we made our way over to the hospital, parked and went on in, got registered and waited.   There was a young Indian fellow who was there who hooked me up to 25 wires...minimum.  I even had tube in my nose not to mention all of the electrodes every where.  Several on my head ears neck back arms legs they were everywhere it seemed.   They used this icky gooey paste and the put it on my head and therfore in my ear and yuck.  It was just eeewwww gross stuff. 

It was a very small room with 2 hospital beds.  The whole thing was just so strange to me.  Never mind the electrodes and tube in my nose and that thing on my finger but sleeping in pajamas, in bed by myself, no clock, extremely dark room, need I say more?  And after all that and no matter how tired I was it took almost all night to go to sleep.  Sheeesh.  Unbelievable! 

It was too soon before I heard the guy on my intercom saying good morning time to get up.

Ugh.  So I got up we heard everyone else up so we went out to socialize.  Abby offered to do a coffee run since there were no cafeterias open in the hospital.  So everyone was happy for Abby's offer.  So the rest of my day in the hospital was comprised of 4 half hour naps every 2 hours.  I almost had to stay for a 5th one because I had rapid eye movement during  the night.  But at the end of the 4th one I was told I was free to go.  Wahoo!

So now I get to go back for follow up in mid February and for the next two weeks I get to log my night time activities to take with me.  Home work...phooey!

Well needless to say we are home now and happy to be showered and I cannot wait to sleep in my own bed.

Hand Drawn Dragon

Today I don't have much time to do any crafting because we are leaving at 4pm to go to the Parry Sound Hospital where I will be having a sleep assessment done.  It will be quite interesting I am sure.  I am happy that there is no pre-prep for me to do for example fasting, which I absolutely hate doing.  So I just go, they hook a million wires up to me and apparently they can diagnose about 150 illnesses from this process, which I think is pretty amazing.  I will try to get Abby to take some photos for me...that should be fun, I am looking forward to the experience but I am not looking forward to hearing what they find in the end.

On to happier thoughts.   In one of my ATC trading groups, ATC World Yahoo Group, I was one of two winners for the WTA Lottery.  What fun!  The other winner requested Sea dragons and Fantasy...which I am not really into either.  So I found myself looking on the net for videos on "how to draw dragons" and I found the perfect video.  It usually takes me a lot longer to find something.  Here is the video, which I thought was an awesome one.  And here is my drawing, I wish I had chosen red and orange to colour the dragon in but I can live with this. I just hope that Dorena will like it...Its only my 2nd attempt at drawing a dragon.

One tuckered cookie

Today we had an appointment up in South River.   We took the scenic route home and stopped to take some photos on Tower Road where Abby was conceived.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE the ice and snow on the rocks after a storm...we have had freezing fog within the last 24 hours so it was beautiful to see these rocks!

I also took photos of a roof that we saw snow and ice melting  off of it, which is something I am finding that fascinates me at the moment.

Then when we finally got home, I have barely turned on my computer.  I sat there long enough to check some email and tags on Facebook.  We actually had an afternoon siesta.  Woke up feeling  a lot better than the first time around this morning.

We woke up and decided to go out for a walk.  I'm gosh. ..did that ever pooch me right out.  For the first time in a very long time we walked all the way to the end of Wooden Bridge Road.  It was lovely outside as it was plus 2.  

I have been keeping myself busy so that I am good and tired for a good nights sleep at the Parry Sound Hospital for a sleep assessment.  This should be interesting indeed.  I will keep you posted here.

I have also made some banana bread in my slow cooker today because my gas oven needs a repair.  I messed up in the recipe because the one I printed for the slow cooker said to use butter, but my one that says to cook in oven, uses oil...so I looked at the recipe and thought, hmmm why does one need oil and one does not?   lol  so what do I do?    I had already added the 1/2 cup margarine and without really thinking it through I also added a 1/2 cup of oil.....lol...silly me, huh?  Well, it turned out delicious!  It was the most moistest banana bread I have ever made.  When I do it again, I will for sure use only one or the other but live and learn, right?     

Laughter Is Food for Soul

I only just saw this on Facebook and I thought it was so great I just had to blog it.

There is a whole bunch of people on a subway and one guy in particular is looking at something on his laptop, and he starts to chuckle, which its not long before his laughter is so lively, animated & boisterous & contagious that within minutes he had everyone else laughing along with him, even though they had no clue what they were laughing about.  I wish I could have been there in person.

Laughter is indeed good medicine



Laughing is definitely good for the soul.

Art Class Part 2 Week 2

Today we finished the one painting with the two minute sky.  At first, I didn't like my sky at all compared to Linda's and Kristina's, because theirs were streaky and mine was just kind of too yellow.  But once I did the tree line, I loved my sky, but then, I didn't really end up liking my tree line.  That is until we put the Jack Pines in.  It was nice to learn how to do the Jack Pines today.

I had to keep redoing my water line (the beach part) but it was a great way to divide up the page using the 3/4 rule.  This painting is considered finished, I may or may not decide to add to it later.

This painting has become one of my favourite paintings that I have done so far up to date.  Its not quite done, but its getting there.  I have a bit of work to do to my tree, and want to add a little bit more snow to the west of the creek.  LOVE how my building turned out.  And look at the detail of the bush behind the chicken barn.  Looking forward to next week.

Below here is my Art Heart Week #3.  I had no idea what I was going to do until I got my Nat-mail today.  I love love love when Nat sends me snail mail because she always goes above and beyond and is always very generous.  Thank you so much for the goodies so that I could start and finish this project.

And once again my friend Nat is just so talented!  I never know what she going to turn to gold next!  I don't know anyone else that once she gets an idea, well that is it!  She certainly has the midas touch!  I just absolutely LOVE the Snowman ATC she made for me, he is just too sweet for words.

Same as the rolodex that is below here...detail I tell you!  Look at the banner, its all typed up from using an old fashioned typewriter.   LOVE LOVE LOVE it...Thank you so much Nat!

I may end up doing some more painting this evening...will see how it goes, but in the mean time, the music I found to listen to today has been very soothing...you can find it here 

Happy Mail - Jan 17/17

Any one who knows me well will tell you that my absolute most favourite crafty time of year is Halloween.  But for those who know me even better than that know that other than Abby and Halloween, my most favourite thing of all is HAPPY MAIL!  Today, I received 5 envelopes which is the most I have received all in one day in the mail for a long time!

While I do have a system for opening the mail, I wish I had kept a log book of every single swap I have played in and some details.  It would have been so interesting.  I also wish that I had put everything in to binders and protective sleeves right from the start so that I could easily show off what I have received for what I have sent.  There became so many that I just couldn't keep up with it and it all went by the wayside.  I have been collecting for almost 8 years and still going strong with it.  Look at the photo below of all of my envies opened up! Beautiful colours, right?  All of them together laid out like this remind me of a rainbow...which many of you may or may not know, that Rainbow is my favourite colour!

Now I will share images of what I got closer up so you can see why I am so taken with these ATCs (Artist Trading Cards)

I won't mention the names of the artists but this particular artist is from the USA. She is sooooooo incredibly talented! Other than the mixed media one which I LOVE the background...the other 4 are all hand painted with either acrylic or water colour...not sure which.  And I don't know how she does but every now and then she paints some of these like as though they are my own backyard here in the North.

This particular artist also is from the USA, (for the next ATC Below) and also in a Yahoo Group that I played in several years ago but stopped at one point because you had to send money for the returns to cover the cost of postage. Which I totally get, but since we have been on a fixed income, well cutting back was a necessity.  But a good friend who I have found touch with because of Facebook convinced me to go back to ATC World, as I would be welcomed with open arms, even though some negative stuff happened in another Yahoo Group previously which was why I ended up starting my own group on Facebook so I could control some of those things.)

At any rate, I was winner A for the January Winner Take All.  The next 3 ATCs are what I received for being a winner for this month.  

This ATC is from an artist from a site called Swap Bot.   I LOVE this card even though its simple, but sweet.  The artist recycled the envelope that she sent it to me in, and she wrote a sweet little note all on ATC sized coloured paper and put feux stitching on each page back and front and stamped a logo on each page so there was no mistake that it was all from the same envelope.  The same logo was also on the back of the ATC and the envelope...good thinking!

I  have been busy so far in the house today getting some domestic stuff done, that was my story yesterday too but yesterday I cooked a turkey so we could have turkey sandwiches together for supper tonight.  This morning I was doing some laundry and cleaning up house and since Abby was home we decided to go to Burks Falls this afternoon which took some time...so we were tired and a nap was much needed.  So I will see if I can get to Art Heart Week #3 tonight.

Home Made Embellishments

Just a short one tonight after yesterday's lengthy blog.

I thought I would do just something a little on the small and simple side today. This idea comes from my friend Bonnie over at jaspersgems.   She loves to watch the how to videos and has far more patience for them than I do.  I don't even want to know how many important tips I may have missed from skipping through the video far too fast.  I am sorry but I don't have the video link for this one, actually I am not sure if she got it from a video or if it were her own idea.

Anyway I made quite a few of these tonight and with hopes that they will work out on some Valentine ATCs and other project I have on the go.  They actually didn't take too long to make, once I got the right formula for the order of things.

Stamping Up Birthday Party

I don't feel too badly considering I missed an actual day blog, at least the day is noted properly for this post.  I had such a lovely afternoon yesterday with my new Stampin Up Friends, that it all exhausted me so much that by the time I got home, and just ended up going to crash. I also wasn't feeling that great either, so when Abby got home from work at 8:00 we both just vegged in front of the TV after sharing with each other about our days.  

Here goes the description of my afternoon.  I walked in and found the crafty tables set up for 4.  And it was well decorated so I was impressed because it did not leave me with an impression that it was just "thrown together".

She made these adorable little treat baskets, that she decorated and filled with little Hershey's Cookies & Cream mini chocolate bars, there were maybe six or seven of them each wrapped individually using decorative Stampin Up paper. When I found out that they were little chocolates, I gobbled them up, too yummy to stall taking photos of them.   However did she know these are my favourites?

The first thing we did was the shaker card, and I thought that was fidgety!  It was nothing compared to what was to come!  I had to have a little help from my new friends to help me get some of the fidgety stuff done.  But what a great little card! I just LOVE the design of how it all went together.

We then went on to card #2...OMG!!!!   There were all of these little !@#$%$!  sticky individual foil flags for banners on a sheet of foil, that we had to fold each individually onto the string! OMG, I just couldn't do it, but certainly not without giving it a good honest try.  I spent far too much time trying to keep up with Tammy that it put me really far behind.  Finally I gave up and set them aside and moved on to the next card.  But not before Tammy did all the stamping that required to be done for that card for me, since I don't have any of the stamps or colours at home that the project suggested.  I can't think of for the life of me why they would think any singel one human being would ever want to go through this !@#$%! stressful step?  LOL, this was almost the death of me, believe me!  What a mess!

But, I made it through the afternoon yesterday without getting too terribly frustrated over these !@#$%! banners!  I was more exhausted by the time I got home though.  LOL, once I set that project aside and moved on to the next.  Here is the final result of what I did this morning...(this may end up being the last thing that I get to craft wise tonight lol) Looks like I picked just the right colours for those banners, right?  

I opened up my goodie box from Stampin Up this morning and I sorted everything and put everything away, except for the messed up silver foiled useless banners and I filed them under G, but then I got out my banner die and started cutting...I almost gave up on this too, but I persisted...I may not have prevailed those stupid banners like Tammy did, (but she is the teach, she is supposed to prevail...lol) but I prevailed the project in the end and I am quite proud of them! 

Then we moved onto the card that has the cake punched out of it.  These are all lovely, lovely cards, but I wish we had saved the hardest one for the last one to do...as the rest of them were all pretty simple...

In this kit there were also some tags to make.  I am not much of a tag person, unless I am altering them using mixed media fun...but these were all a part of this project.  They are all very cute, I really love the embellishments that came with each one.  One thing I can say about Stampin Up even years after having a chance to try out a few of their paper pumpkin projects; their products are all very well made, you definitely get quality, not just quantity.  Here are the 3 different tags that we made.

I had so much fun scrapping with you all and I look forward to joining in on many more in the near future.  I have been living here for far too long and not finding any one to craft with, now I do.  💙