The weekend

It really didn't feel like a busy weekend but when I stop and think about all the things I did I guess it kind of was

The iris are starting to bloom in my back yard reading spot.

Happy Memorial Day

For many today is simply a picnic day to kick of the summer season and an extra day off from work. Dig deeper and you'll find that today is for remembering the brave men and women who died while serving their countries.
Take a minute out of your day to remember them and thank them for your freedom

In Flanders Field - Poem by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The long weekend that wasn't.

While everyone is enjoying the 3 day weekend I'll be heading off to work today. Sucks to be me. I had yesterday off and I have Monday off and since the Memorial Day holiday falls on my regular day off I do get another day off during the week. I'll have Tuesday off. Still it's not the same as having 3 days in a row.

Enough of the whining. Since the weather has taken a dramatic change here and we skipped from pre spring like weather right to the dog days of summer I've been spending my time after work out in the back yard reading. Since we had that new deck built last year you would think that's where I'm spending my time but I'm not. No shade there and I need shade.

I've got my own little spot set up under the tree in our back yard.

Gibbs hates the sun too but he likes going back there under the tree with me and hanging out in the shade. I had a different chair out there but I splurged yesterday and bought a couple cheap Adirondack chairs at Walmart yesterday. I almost bought three, one red, one white and one blue but changed my mind and just got the two red ones.

It's Friday

Do you want to know how happy I am about that?

Messenger boy

Today I am the messenger boy

Mom didn't post yesterday because on Tuesday she came home from work and started sawing logs on the couch.  She was acting like she had a rough day or something. Just because her alarm decided to go off 15 minutes later than it was supposed to. It was set right so no clue what happened there. I know it's not my fault I don't even know how to work one of those things.
Then she went to work and had to run back home an hour later to get her finger splint because the cut on her finger broke open and started bleeding a little when she was trying to light a burner on the stove. Don't worry though, it was nothing serious, it's all good now.

I had my doubts about her getting a post ready for today since yesterday she came home from work and went out with her kindle and sat in a chair under the tree to read. I didn't want to see the blog get dusty so I took over for her.

Hopefully she'll get her act together soon. Especially in the crafting department. It's almost the end of the month and she's hardly done anything at all.

Asked and Answered

Since there are several of you who's comments come through as no reply blogger I can't answer your questions in email like I used to. I don't want you to think I'm ignoring your questions though so I'm picking some to answer here.

Betsy asked Did you ever get a cat? No, not yet. I'm still wanting one though

Ginny asked how my hand was and if I worked yesterday. I went to the doctor yesterday morning and they said it's healing nicely. I didn't work yesterday but I did have to work on Sunday.

Anni asked if there was still a kitty on the horizon. Yes there most definitely is. I just haven't found one yet. Of course I haven't been looking too hard but I will find one eventually.

Ginny also asked if I could shower with my hurt finger and if it hurt. Well I wasn't supposed to get it wet so I showered with a rubber glove on. As for hurting it really doesn't hurt much at all.

Not a question but Sharla commented that when she saw the pic from in the doctors office she thought I had taken Gibbs to the vet to prepare for bit removal so I could get a kitty. I still haven't made that appointment (shame on me) but I wondered if anyone would think it was the vets office when they saw that picture

Room for two

My daughter Amanda sent me some pictures of Ace to use for a blog post.

Gibbs says "What am I? Chopped liver?"

I think there's room enough for both of you on the blog.

Guess what I did

Yesterday I left work a little early and went here. Can you guess where this is and why I was there?

I had a little disagreement with a box cutter. The cut was pretty deep and it bled like crazy but I didn't need stitches. They did tell me to take the rest of the day off though. 

 And to wear this splint through the weekend.

Do you know how hard it is to type with a splint on your index finger? I made so many mistakes that it took me forever to type anything so I'm giving up after I finish this post. I'll be back to commenting after the splint comes off

Real live books

On a whim I splurged and bought myself a couple of real live honest to goodness books. Since I've been doing a lot of the plaques I thought both of these could help me learn a new trick or two

They just came in the mail Wednesday so I haven't done anything more than browse through real quick. My brain hasn't been functioning enough to comprehend more than looking at the pictures.

I suppose I could have found stuff like this online because there are tons of tutorials out there but here's my problem, they're mostly videos. What's wrong with a video you ask? A couple things. First I have a hard time hearing most of them. Second I found that the majority of them annoy me because the person doing them tends to babble on forever before getting to the point. I guess I just don't have a whole lot of patience 

Playing my ace in the hole

Actually it's more like my daughter's cat Ace but it's what I've got for today and how can you miss with a cute kitty face.

A nose for news

Or maybe he is just good at sniffing out things that I've forgotten

I keep forgetting to post about this. Some time ago Grace had posted this picture that said "Introverts unite separately in your own homes." I loved it and commented that I needed it in poster size. 

The next thing I knew a package arrived with a message that said "You asked for a poster I made you a t-shirt"  What a sweetheart. LOVE IT! It's totally me

What is art?

According to Merriam Webster the simple definition of art is something that is created with imagination and skill or that expresses important ideas for feelings.

I happen to believe that art can be created by accident or maybe unintentionally. For example, here is a portion of the paper that protects my work table when I do any painting.

 Now you could argue that this is not art but I've seen expensive pieces of art that are not much unlike this. It might not necessarily be art that appeals to your taste but does that make it less artistic?

Personally I think art is very difficult to define and is more a matter of personal taste than anything else.

Making the customer happy

Yesterday at work I had a cake order to do. A customer came in several days ago wanting a cake. It was for her husband's 50th birthday but also for her daughter's 26th birthday. First she asked for a full sheet cake. She told me what she wanted for her husband on it and asked to also have the wording for her daughter on there too but it was mainly for her husband. Then she considered buying two 1/2 sheet cakes. That however would have cost her quite a bit more money for the same amount of cake. I suggested to her that I could do one cake decorated like two. She told me to go ahead and do that.

This is what she got

For the husband's side I dug in to the Halloween cake decorations and found some black fencing that I used on the corners. I sprinkled on some crushed oreo's for dirt, added a black border and black writing and plopped in some black plastic balloons.
She said her daughter liked pink so pink roses it was and I added a bit of darker pink sugar crystals. I like how the pink looked next to the black. Her brother picked the cake up for her so I look forward to the next time she comes in so I can find out if she liked it or not

The problem with having a boring life

I will be the first to admit that I have a very boring life. It's pretty much the same thing over and over day after day. I'm ok with that though. I guess it kind of suits me. Of course being boring doesn't make for exciting blog posts but I guess you can't have everything.

The highlight of my day off was sitting under a quilt on the couch reading.

Or maybe it was folding laundry. Well I didn't take a picture of the folded laundry so my kindle is what you get. It was a good day for reading though. It was cold, gloomy and wet. I'm beginning to thing that it's going to be a very disappointing summer

You're a butterfly

And butterflies are free to fly.  It might be kind of nice to be able to fly off somewhere.

Another painted wood shape that will end up as a magnet

Happy Friday the 13th.

Hot Stuff

Lately my new friend has been a tube of pain relief creme. The knuckle above my index finger on my right hand has been very achy. I need to see a doctor but I'm not better at calling to make doctor appointments than I am at making groomer appointments.

Lately I'm just feeling way older than I should. It seems like all my pieces parts are falling apart.

My advice for the day

AND

 

I didn't make these. They were magnets that I bought at Dollar Tree.

Someone asked

Where I get all my ideas from for my plaques. I can't remember who asked the question and I'm too lazy to look it up but I will answer.

I do a lot of searching.

I search Pinterest. If I have no particular theme in mind I just do a general search for mixed media ideas. If I don't like the results I may change the wording up a bit.

I also do google searches the same way and look at the image results

If I see something that catches my eye I think about how I could copy the idea. Sometimes I have a specific theme in mind so I'll use that word in my search such as coffee or birds.

I wish I could say that everything I do is my own original ideas but that just isn't the case.

Happy Mother's Day

However you celebrate the day, whether it is with human children or fur babies I hope you have a wonderful day

Image from Graphics Fairy

Wrapping it up

Today is the final post for my April craft report.

The last of the plaques was this one.

The whole group

minus this one that I finished

 

Two more

Almost through with all the plaques. I've got two today and then one more. I guess I need to start thinking about what I'll do for May.

On the left: I painted the wood, glued on a piece of fabric. On top of that I glued a piece of felt then a piece of muslin that I had machine embroidered the words on. Lastly was the mug. I'm not thrilled with how the mug looks but it is what it is.

On the right: I just had some fun painting a background and then printed out the saying on some scrapbook paper.

As for my absence yesterday, after we got home from work we had to take care of some yard work and a few other things and by the time we were finished, got dinner out of the way I was too tired to do much of anything. I tried doing a little on the computer but we were also having some issues again. I haven't checked to see if we've exceeded our data usage again or not but everything was running very slow. Hopefully I'll get caught up with everyone real soon

Who is that guy

A break from the craft report so you can all get a look at the new and improved Sir Gibbs

First let me say that getting pictures of him was not easy. We attempted sit and stay but he insisted that he needed to be right next to me and I'm talking right in my face so that I couldn't even get a camera in there.

Next we tried to catch him off guard. That worked much better. I still had quite a few blurry pictures but I got enough clear ones to post

When Vicky asked what we wanted done I said just cut him short and clean him up.

 He's nice and soft now and he smells better too. You can see however that he's already gotten him chin hairs a bit dirty.

How about a before and after. He doesn't look like the same dog does he?

April craft report part 2

What gloomy weather we're having here. The last few days have been on the chilly side with rain and cloudy skies. Monday I was glad to have off since it was rainy and foggy all day long. I got to take a mid morning nap right after Gibbs came back from the groomer.
I know you want to see how handsome he looks but you're just going to have to wait another day.


Today we have a very funky looking angel and an equally funky looking raggedy Ann type girl.

 The angel was done all in pieces that were then glued together before gluing to the plaques. Her crown is made from aluminum foil and the colored with some distress stains.
The one on the left was a card that I made a year or so ago and had laying around. I dismantled it and attached it to the plaque. No sense it letting it go to waste and it made for a quick finish..

April craft report part 1

The month of April I did nothing but the 5x7 wood plaques for my project. I managed to finish 9 and then there was the one I showed you yesterday that was almost finished.

I'm going to break this up in to several posts and only show you a couple at a time. One was a repeat of one I did last month and another I've already shown you.

Today you get these two

 

I started off by painting the whole thing an off white then taped off a section at the top and bottom to paint the red and blue. I used some inks and stains to distress it a bit and make it look more aged. The burlap pieces that are glued to the middle section were pieces that I purchased some time ago and never found the right project to use them in. I did the writing by hand with a paint pen. That's normally something I'm very reluctant to do because I don't trust myself to not screw it up. 

Can't decide

Holy smokes, it's May 1st already. I spent yesterday working on finishing up my craft projects for the month. I'll show you those tomorrow. Today I have one that is almost done but not quite.

I couldn't decide what to do. I didn't know if I wanted to leave it just the way it is or add a saying to it. The tail feathers on the birds are made with a blue wire that I had in my stash.

I considered writing "Life is better with friends" but didn't know if I really liked that or not.

So cast your vote for either
a) leave it as it is
b) add the saying  "Life is better with friends"
or
c) another option....please specify