More cards.

These are some more cards I made earlier this week. I was browsing through all my supplies and found some tags I decided to play with. The first card is my favorite--I may have to keep it for myself! All the sentiments are ancient rub-ons from a Deja Views set, and the little faux postage stickers are from Artchix Studio. Gotta use up those leftovers! I looooove the faux postage images, they are so sweet.




These are really so much prettier in real life...I guess I need to set up a good place to photograph stuff so you can see the details better, like all the pros at Two Peas do. (Yeah, I'll get right on that.) These are all Stickled up, so they're much more glittery than they look here. I am loving the Stickles--all the prettiness of glitter without the dreadful mess.

And this one is a total departure!

I had a little stack of lime green cards to use up, and this pretty sheet of old Chatterbox paper that went with them, plus some very old Bazzill Christmas stickers, so I did six cards in this style. Todd asked if I'd make cards for the engineers at work, so I figure I'll give 'em these. Engineers aren't very big on aesthetics. Not when it comes to paper crafts, anyway.

We had a really great weather day here today. It was cold and windy and the sun kept popping in and out of these huge grey clouds that whizzed across the sky. Well, I enjoyed it, anyway. It's unusually cold for this time of year here. It's actually cold enough that I could pull out my beloved brown wool jacket, and I could tell exactly the last time it was cold enough to wear it: the last weekend of January. Because there were two ticket stubs in the pocket--one for "Sweeney Todd," which I saw with Todd, and one for "27 Dresses," which I saw with my friend Beverly.

I get a kick out of finding things in jacket pockets when I get them out for a new season. Usually it's ticket stubs or fortune cookie slips, but one wonderful time I found a 20-dollar bill in the pocket of my pink spring jacket. That doesn't happen too often!

Christmas in Pine Tree, Vermont.

I have a bunch more cards to photograph and post, but I don't feel like tracking down my camera batteries just now. So here's a question that I saw online today and thought was fun: If you could pick any Christmas movie to spend a couple days in, which would you pick?

I didn't have to think about it for more than a second--I'd hop into "White Christmas." I love that lush Fifties Technicolor world. I love the nightclub in Florida where the boys meet the girls, the club car in the train to Vermont, the New York nightclub that Rosemary Clooney runs away to, and most especially the Columbia Inn. Who wouldn't want to stay there and watch the snow fall? Even if you did have to hang out with that obnoxious Danny Kaye!

It's not a great movie--I think that every time I watch it, which has to be at least a hundred times by now. The plot is beyond silly, and some of the songs make you shake your head, they're so bad. But the little world they created is what I think of when I think of the perfect Christmas of the past!

So......what's yours? Please do share! Maybe you'll remind me of a movie I like even better!

What I've been doing.

I went to a crop Friday night and got started making Christmas cards. When I came home, I just decided to spread everything out on the kitchen table and keep playing.


I haven't done any stamping to speak of for a long time, because I'm doing my paper crafting on the floor now, and stamping on the floor is not an easy thing to do.

I bought a few Christmas stamps at a stamp show last month, and combining them with some of the stamps I already had, plus some Christmas paper scraps and Tim Holtz distress ink, yielded some combinations I was really pleased with! Oh, and lots of Stickles glitter glue, but that didn't photograph very well. It looks great in real life, though, very sparkly.




I got thirty cards done. And had a really relaxing time doing it!

I still have tons of scraps and pre-folded cards left, so maybe I'll do another crazy stamping extravaganza before the holidays, but if I don't, I at least have a nice set of cards to send out to various people. That is if I can bear to part with them!

Food for thought.

I heard this writer George Packer on NPR this morning, talking about what sort of president Barack Obama will be, and I was very interested in his outlook. Here's the show On Point: Obama and the Liberal Moment, and here's Packer's New Yorker article: The New Liberalism.

Grandma update.

My grandma is back in the hospital with a mild case of pneumonia, which is very common after a broken hip. Please keep those good thoughts coming--pneumonia can be very serious, but I hope she's got the strength and the good doctors and nurses to help her fight it off.

I know it's too early...

...but I'm browsing around at Amazon listening to Christmas music just for fun.

Go listen to the samples from this (I think you have to use Explorer for the player to work) and see if it doesn't make you tap your toes!

I didn't grow up listening to Bing, Frank, or Nat, but they are all a huge part of my Christmas now. I think it's because of the movie "A Christmas Story," with the giant radio playing big band music in the background. How I love that movie!

Better late than never.

Last night I went to work and finished the last six pages of my Christmas journal from last year. For those who don't know about it, Shimelle Laine does a "Journal Your Christmas" class every year. When you've paid and taken it once, you can take it every year afterwards for free. I'm planning to do it again this year. It adds a lot to my Christmas season.

Last year we started traveling in mid-December, so I never finished the book. Once Christmas is over, I tend to just shut it off and move on to the next thing. So here are the last six pages.

December 20, write about an unexpected card, present, or other unexpected surprise. We weren't expecting to have to go to Maryland the week before Christmas.


December 21, what does your home look like right now? Since I wasn't home, I wrote a little bit about what I was doing on that day.


December 22's theme was to make your " to do" list. Again, traveling sort of negated that, so I just put in a favorite Christmas poem instead.


December 23, write about your Christmas stocking traditions. Since I wrote about that in my 2006 album, I was stumped, until I remembered that my sister-in-law Lisa had put stockings on our bed that very night while we were staying with her!


December 24, I liked this old picture because it reminded me of going to church every Christmas Eve.


December 25, I just listed a few of the things that made our Christmas memorable.

Now I need to decorate the cover (and also the cover of my 2006 book!) I don't know why I'm so challenged when it comes to album covers. I think I feel like it has to be extra-perfect since it's the first thing you see.

But I want to get both books completely done before December 1 rolls around and I start a new book, so that's a good motivation to get over myself and finish them up!

Todd's project.

Todd has been getting into the woodworking groove by doing a few small projects before pursuing our ultimate DIY holy grail: a new fireplace surround and mantel, flanked by bookshelves, at the end of the living room.

But before he goes whole hog on that, he whipped up a little thing this weekend. We have a short wall in our foyer that has a smoke detector, a doorbell, and a thermostat running right down the middle of the wall, making it hard to hang anything substantial that might pretty up the wall. And it's only the first thing people see when they come in the house, so it was obviously a perfect place for the builder to put all the ugly stuff!

I forgot about the huge vent underneath, another attractive touch.

I bought the red shelf on the right at the Newport News Fall Festival a month or so ago, but before then that space was usually bare. I've never really been able to figure out how to dress up our foyer walls, the space is so small and cramped.

Here's the pretty thing that Todd made:


Since we can't really cover the smoke detector for safety reasons, and if we covered the thermostat, it would have to be with a basket or something easily taken off for temperature fiddling, covering the doorbell was the only option.

Here it is in place:


Now the rest of the wall needs to be balanced...I'm thinking maybe a couple more small shelves and some pictures. I need to dig through my stash and see what I have. But isn't it a pretty way to disguise something so bland and boring?

Do you think it I put something small on top of the doorbell shelf, it would interfere with the smoke detector? I'm thinking just some branches or berries in a small bowl, nothing big and solid. I'd love to camouflage that thing a little bit.

Anyway, I think Todd did a nice job. He's a handy person to have around!

Whatcha got cooking?

I got up this morning and cleaned up the kitchen and then proceeded to trash it again by making a big pan of lasagna and a big pot of soup with some turkey sausage and some ground turkey that both needed to be cooked ASAP.

I am not a lasagna lover...I used to be as a kid, but now it just tastes...eh. Todd, however, ranks it among his favorite foods. He came home from work the other night and I told him dinner was in the oven. He inquired hopefully, "Lasagna?" You should have seen his face fall when he peeked inside and saw it was tuna-noodle casserole.

So I took pity on the guy and made lasagna. I found a recipe in one of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks for lasagna made with mild turkey sausage, and it's pretty good. I think part of my distaste for lasagna comes from ricotta cheese, which is one of the few foods that really grosses me out. So I used small-curd cottage cheese instead, and Asiago instead of Parmesan. And dried herbs instead of fresh (adjust amounts way down) because the garden herbs are dead and the grocery store herbs are craaaazzzy expensive, along with everything else in the grocery store. (The sticker shock is just killing me lately!)

The soup recipe comes from Simply in Season, which I may have mentioned here before. It's published by Herald Press, which is a Mennonite publishing house. It's very much in the same spirit as the More-With-Less Cookbook, only this one has a list of veggies and fruits that are available in each season, and then a list of good things to cook with them. For people who are trying to eat locally and in season, it can be a big help. Plus there are lots of fun facts on diminished farmland, pesticides, and impoverished people of other lands, just in case you can't enjoy your food without a heaping helping of Mennonite guilt.

(I truly do believe in the principles of good stewardship, helping others, and being mindful of what you consume. But sometimes the Menno-guilt gets to me, I'll confess. Makes me want to run out and buy a bunch of blood diamonds, fur coats and off-season kiwi fruits, which is a weird way to rebel no matter how you look at it.)

Anyway, the soup:

Turkey Barley Soup

4 cups water
4 cups chicken or turkey broth
1 1/2 cups diced carrots
1 cup diced celery
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. each poultry seasoning and pepper

Combine in large soup pot. Cover and simmer 1 hour.

1 pound ground turkey
2 T. ketchup
1 T. soy sauce
1/8 tsp. each ground nutmeg, dried sage, dried thyme

Brown together in a skillet. Add to soup and serve.

I did the slow cooker option, where you add the first group of ingredients to the cooker, brown the turkey and seasonings as directed, and then add them to the cooker and cook on Low for 6-7 hours, although mine was done in 4-5.

When I make it again, I'll brown the turkey by itself, give it a quick drain/rinse, and then add the seasonings. It had just a little too much grease left on it.

Since I can't just leave a recipe alone, toward the end of the cooking time I also added about 2 cups of chopped roasted vegetables (fingerling potatoes, carrots, sweet potato, butternut squash) from a previous supper, which needed to be used up. This made for a very orange soup, but it was good!

I take my soupmaking mantra from my dad: "What else would be good in this?" He used to go down to the basement on Saturdays and come up with an armload of home-canned and home-frozen vegetables from the garden, toss in whatever meats and veggies were lurking in the fridge, and come up with a terrific pot of soup for supper. I don't think it was ever quite the same twice. This is the way I like to make soup, too.

Wait till I show y'all what Todd is making in the garage today! To be continued...

President-elect Obama!

My, that sounds nice!

My favorite line from Obama's speech last night:

"To those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope."

Congrats to him--he looked pretty solemn last night and I think he has a pretty good idea of what's in store for him. But last night was still a delicious moment. Humbling, too, to see what this election means to African-Americans who probably never thought such a thing would happen in their lifetimes.

I'm not a person who puts a lot of faith in politicians. But I have to say that after eight years of feeling smothered under Bush/Cheney and their utter disinterest in and disdain for the American people, this feels like a breath of fresh air to me.

Vote!

I don't know whether to feel left out that I don't get to go vote with everybody else today...or glad that I don't have to stand in line in the pouring rain! Brrrr!

Todd called me on his way to work at 6:30 and said that the line at our polling place was halfway around the building, everybody standing in the dark with their umbrellas. So maybe I'm glad I didn't have to go deal with that. It's great to see that people really care about getting their voice heard this year, though.

Despite some people at the forums I read who are trying to pee in my Cheerios and harsh my buzz, I really am excited about Obama's potential win tonight. Fingers crossed!

If your buzz is feeling harshed, too, hike on over to Oodles and Oodles and read the poem she's got on her entry there today (scroll down just a touch). It's wonderful!

Grandma update.

Grandma is doing well--the surgery went great and they're getting her up and walking right away. She has not been very mobile at all the past several years, and I'm hoping that won't impede her recovery. My cousin Roland has been keeping me updated on Facebook (he lives in the same city where she's hospitalized) and he speculated that the physical therapy might even help her regain a little of the mobility, which would certainly be a blessing. Grandma is a toughie--she's beaten breast cancer and a heart attack, so I am praying she will recover well from this, too. I know it'll be a long and painful process, though, so keep those good thoughts coming!

A few fall pics.

We went up to Williamsburg on Saturday to do a little shopping. We ended up in the downtown area--Duke of Gloucester Street has shopping at one end, and then you can stroll down the street and into Colonial Williamsburg.

Shopping district:



Buildings in Colonial Wiliamsburg:

Just a quick drop-in to say...

...that my Grandma Clark in Missouri fell yesterday and broke her hip...she had surgery today. I know we'd all appreciate prayers and positive thoughts--she is a very special person to her family, and I love her bunches. I really hope she can get through the recovery and physical therapy okay. It's times like these that I wish I could just zap myself instantly through time and space to visit the people I love.

Hope everybody is having a fun Halloween--we had about 75 trick-or-treaters, and now I'm kicking back watching some MST3K.

Insert clever title here.

Well, I was in a cranky mood yesterday, wasn't I? I'll try to be nice today and spare you the rant on horrible Christmas music I was composing earlier today in a store which shall not be named. (Let's just say that if that was indeed Aretha Franklin, then she needs to retire. Now.)

Speaking of Christmas, I actually used a new scrapbook line right away, and not two years after it comes out, after everyone else has seen it eleventy-billion times, which is my typical creative arc. This is Basic Grey Wassail, for those to whom that means something:


I got it all scanned and stitched (yes, I scanned! I stitched! And it worked!) and then realized I forgot to put on the journaling. So there's a little sticker with journaling attached over the three small squares. These "home decor" pictures are so pathetic, I thought I should really snazz up the page...the whole lipstick on a pig thing, which has far more uses than merely in American politics.

See, almost every year, we go out of town for Christmas, and last year we were seriously gone for three weeks, so this is the only decorating we did--a few bows on the windows and a swag and wreath by the door. No tree, no nuthin'. And I suspect this year will be just as bad. I know someday I'll look back from the old folks' home and long for the exciting holidays when we traveled all over creation and never got to have Christmas in our own home with family visiting us for once...but till then, let me hold my seasonal grudge!

We went out to get Halloween candy last night and I jokingly told Todd that we had to go, before all that was left was Bit O'Honeys. Does anybody really like Bit O'Honeys? Or those caramel things with the "creamy" white centers that were actually flaky and gross? We got Tootsie Roll pops--delicious, but not pig-out-able in case there are any left over that we have to dispose of. You can't really pig out on lollipops.

I am holding out on turning the heat on...shivering in bed at night, sticking my hands in my armpits and holding them under hot water, layering on the clothes. I have no compunction in turning on the air conditioning as soon as the temps go over 80, but when it comes to heat I decide to get frugal. I figure I have to be frugal to make up for the wild, abandoned a/c use from May to September.

The nice thing about the early cold weather is that the trees are turning earlier, too, and drives around town have become opportunities to enjoy lone beauties here and there among the strip malls. Makes the time at red lights pass faster! The tree in our side yard (it's not an oak, it's not a maple, and there my knowledge stops) is just starting to turn burgundy and I can see the leaves against the blue sky from my desk--so gorgeous.

You know, I spent the whole fall of 1985 collecting, identifying and pasting leaves into a huge collection for tenth grade biology, and what was the use? I suspect if I had kids, I'd have a very hard time enforcing the homework rules, knowing how little I remember of anything I learned from K-12. My brain is the kind that latches onto random, useless facts and completely ignores vast patches of the kind of knowledge school is made to impart, like quadratic equations and what rocks are made of.

It was a peaceful way to spend the evenings after school, though--I had a table set up in the room off our garage, and I'd go out every night and paste leaves to big sheets of cardstock with rubber cement. The pressed leaves all smelled like tea, kind of sweet and mossy. My mom finally got me to take the leaf collection back with me when I was home in July (after about 15 requests) and now it lives under our bed. I just can't throw away all that hard work, even though the rubber cement has probably completely disintegrated the leaves by now.

I guess I should pull it out and find out what the tree in the side yard is.

Where Oprah can stick her Kindle.

Every time I go to Amazon to look up a book or find a gift, I have to look at the ads for the Kindle on the home page. Which is moderately annoying. I don't want a Kindle, I have no interest in a Kindle, stop showing me the Kindle!

Well, now they've ramped up the annoyance factor; here's the new first line of the Kindle ad:

"This summer, Oprah received a gift that she says changed her life. 'I'm telling you, it is absolutely my new favorite thing in the world,' she says."

Really, Oprah? Don't you mean it's absolutely your new favorite thing for ten minutes, until the next company comes along and asks you to push its new car, its $500 jeans, its latest wacko New Age religion?

And why do I suspect that Oprah received that life-changing gift from Amazon, and not from one of her BFFs? (Assuming she has any besides Gayle and Stedman the beard.)

It all makes sense, really--Oprah exists to sell American women useless things they don't need, and there could be nothing more useless than the Kindle. I already own too many things that constantly have to be recharged or renewed with fresh batteries. Sitting down with a book or a mag made out of paper is actually a refreshing change--I don't have to make sure it's charged, I can read it in the bathtub, and if the zombie war ever happens, I'll still be able to read my books when the power grid goes down.

The other nice thing about the zombie war will be that Oprah will either be holed up in her bunker or torn limb from limb by a zombie audience and I'll never have to hear of her again.

SB pages.

Here's what I've been working on the past couple of weeks. Sorry about the bad pictures on the 12x12s...my new scanner just isn't that great for scanning/stitching, so I just plop the biggies on the floor and snap a pic. I used to be such a pro at stitching 12x12s...sigh!


It feels good to get some of these pictures scrapped...or as my friend Janet used to say, "Another memory saved, baby!" I'm working backward through 2008, then I'll hopefully move on to 2007, for which I only have a handful of layouts, and then finish off 2006, which is about half done.

Can I just say here how bad I hate postbound albums? My gosh, are they hard to deal with. I'm putting all the 2007s and 2008s into one giant D-ring album, all different sizes, and that is SO much easier than trying to find post extenders and cram a million layouts onto the posts and then simultaneously hold it all together and screw it shut. If you've ever done it, I know you feel my pain!

I have taco soup brewing in the crockpot, since it's quite chilly today. It's supposed to have chicken in it, but I had a little package of stew beef in the freezer, so I used that instead. And you put in a whole bottle of beer. I just went down and stirred it--it smells very beery! Todd will turn up his nose at the beans, but he'll live.

I mailed in our absentee ballots this morning...I'm not sure I've ever said a prayer when voting before, but I actually did close my eyes and mumble a little blessing before I dropped the envelopes down the chute. I really hope that whoever wins, that will be the best choice for the times our country needs to navigate through. It's been an exciting election year--in a good way--but it's also been sobering to see the full scope of what we're up against, economically and globally. I think most of us just want what's best for America. Hard to remember that sometimes.

I'm out, see ya later!

Catching up.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes on my Facebook and in my e-mail last week!!! I felt very loved.

I've had company here for the past week, so not a lot of time to get online and catch up with people. My in-laws came and we got so much accomplished--that is, my mother-in-law and I did! (Todd and his dad got a lot of fishing accomplished.) She helped me put up curtains in the living room, dining room and downstairs bath--talk about a difference. We've lived here almost three years without any downstairs curtains, so it really looks much more soft and finished. When the sun comes back out, I'll get some pictures of everything.

I do have a couple of pictures on my camera right now, though...here are the Halloween cards I made for my nephews and nieces:


I got the paper piecing patterns from the Better Homes and Gardens Scrapbooks Etc website. You're supposed to hand stitch the details, but who has time for that? And I don't think the originals had googly eyes, but I love googly eyes, so I used those. Most of the papers are from Imaginisce, with a few scraps from other Halloween lines.

There was a stamping/scrapbooking show in town this weekend, and I went on Saturday morning...took a few pictures of Tim Holtz projects at the Stampers Anonymous booth:


Stampers Anonymous also carries a line of stamps called Studio 490...here are a couple of things that caught my eye:


Here's Studio 490's blog...looks like lots of inspiration and ideas!

I would have taken more, but of course I always forget to check my camera battery before I go out, and then of course, it's always down to the last drop and I only get a handful of pictures. These were the most impressive project booths, though. There weren't a lot of vendors there this year, but I managed to get some Tim Holtz stamps and a bunch of Adirondack inks, plus a few other odds and ends. Spent my birthday money.

Hope everybody has a great week. I can't believe it's the end of October already!