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I can't decide if the last couple of days I have been busy or lazy. Working takes up a big chunk of the day and then there is the usual daily routines. Sometimes it doesn't leave much time left to fit in other things. It was a good thing that Gibbs was kind enough to fill in for me when I didn't feel like blogging. I'll have to work on teaching him how to leave comments too.

Just so you know that his efforts were appreciated I wanted to let you know that I bought him an extra box of biscuits, a new toy and he has a clean canvas for his nose art in the living room.

He was gracious enough to thank me by dragging grass from the fresh cut lawn through the living room and all over the couch. Such a thoughtful gentleman.

Deep thoughts

I have a clear acrylic picture frame at work that I used to use to display my index cards on my table. Since I haven't been making the index cards I started printing out things I find on facebook that are either funny or inspirational.  Currently this is what's on the frame.

I agreed with this statement but the more I thought about it the more thought I don't want to forget what's gone. Yes, I can choose to not dwell on past mistakes, sorrows or negative moments.  I won't forget what's gone because some of what is gone holds cherished memories.

I'm quite sure that while I store those treasures from the past I can still appreciate what remains and look forward to what is coming my way.

Say what again.

That's right. Someone can't get her act together and take care of her blog so I have to do it again.

This is my "where are my treats" face. Do you think I should put a little more in to it or is this enough to get my point across?

Say what?

Someone is making excuses for not having a blog post for today and it's not this dog. I had to post an old picture of myself just so there would be something here for you today. If I have to do this again tomorrow, there better be some extra treats in it for me.

Avoiding responsability

When I don't care to be a responsible adult and do responsible things like take care of household chores I look for distractions. One such distraction is challenge blogs like Take a word challenge

The theme this time around was turquoise. This may not be the best edit I've ever done but it did succeed in distracting me from housework. That makes it a winner.

Once again the images I used to make this came from snappygoat.com. I also added some textures and masks from Shadowhouse Creations

Flower power

My latest play time consists of looking for and experimenting with ways to make felt or fabric flowers. These will be used to make pins for Mother's day.

I've found lots of ideas on Pinterest and I won't even try to calculate how much time I've spent looking through all the ideas. I definitely have more ideas than I do actual flowers.  Truth is I've only made 2 so far.

This one is felt and glittery fun foam. The size is about 3" across.

This one is fabric with a rolled felt center and it's about 2 1/2" across not counting the leaves.

Of the two I like the fabric one better. The only thing is all the strings hanging from the frayed edges of the fabric. I've tried to cut them off but more magically appear. Maybe I'll try another one and cut the fabric with pinking shears to see what that looks like

Hop to it

Easter is over so it can't be the Easter bunny who was hanging out in my back yard. Some bunny found something very interesting out there. He hung out for quite a while

$7 worth of fun

While at Walmart yesterday I bought a lens set for my cell phone. It comes with 3 different lenses and you just clip it on to your phone

I mostly played with the fish eye lens. It made the sliding glass door look pretty cool

And if a fish was looking out from my deck this is what it would see

Then I thought I would try and take a selfie. I was using the voice command to try and take the picture only it wasn't working. So I started acting really silly and over exaggerated the word and made funny faces while I was saying it.  I think Gibbs was a little concerned about  my mental stability. Looking at the picture I have to say I do look a little crazy.

Have a wonderful Sunday full of smiles, laughter and crazy fun.

30 minute reunion

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet some very old friends for lunch. Of course I only have a half hour for lunch so it was a quick reunion at the local McDonalds. These are two sisters who lived at the opposite end of the neighborhood we grew up in. One is a year older than me and one is a year younger than me. One lives in the same county as I do and one lives in Montana.
The sister from Montana was visiting. It's be about 34 years since I've seen her.

Funny thing is. I don't remember being that much shorter than both of them back in the day

From left to right Becky, me, Marilyn. I stole this picture off of facebook. Becky had a guy eating lunch take it with her cell phone.

In to every life....

...a little rain must fall. And so it has. The last couple days we've had thunderstorms. Nothing severe so no worries.

Rain falling on my deck

I'm not complaining about the rain though because I know the sun will shine again.

And rainy days give me an excuse to sit and play

Not that I need an excuse because I'll sit and play on a sunny day too.

Random

I'm feeling too scatter brained to focus on any one thing so today is random day.

A picture taken looking up through the back yards of my neighbors

I read a quote recently that I really liked. I have no idea who said it nor can I remember where I saw it. The quote was "Give to the world the best you have and the best will come to you".


It's dandelion season. My yard is filling right up with these little yellow beauties. I don't care if some people do think they are a pesky weed.

I think that's about as much random as I can come up with. Time to schedule this puppy and go veg on the couch.

It's like night and day

And that would be because one picture was taken during the night

Loved the look of these clouds in front of the moon

And the other was taken during the day

Looking up in to the tree at the newly growing leaves against that beautiful blue sky

I guess you could say this post is all about looking up.

Colors in the hood

There were the reds and yellows

The pinks and the blues

And the glorious greens.

Things are really starting to come to life around here. That makes me smile. What's the last thing that made you smile?

An Easter craft for me

I showed you the Easter crafts I did to give to other people but I didn't show you one I made for myself.

I took a short wood candle holder and a cheap plastic egg

and turned it in to this. You might recognize this from yesterday's post.

I started by gluing strips of torn book pages on to the egg to cover it. Then I lightly dabbed on some blue paint. I glued on the trim and finished it with the butterfly.
The candle holder was painted with chalk paint, sanded a bit to distress a bit and then finished it off with an antique wax.
I bought the chalk paints and wax sealer a while back and have been wanting to try them just didn't know what to use them on. I have to say that I really like the way it looked and now I want to find something else to use them on.

Here's a side by side before and after

Happy Easter

Easter is the time

 to rejoice and be thankful

for the gift of life,

love and joy.

Have a blessed day

Have a happy Easter for peeps sake

I feel like such a redneck

Remember back when I bought my new camera? Well on that day we also bought a new tv. The one we had in the bedroom died and we moved the 32" tv from the living room up to the bedroom and bought a 43" tv for the living room. I didn't want anything bigger than that because the living room isn't very big.
Any way, the tv stand we had wasn't wide enough to hold the new tv so until I could find a new tv stand we improvised. This is what it looked like from 2/25 until just yesterday.

Here's a closer look at the redneck set up we had. Is that not the most hideous looking thing ever?

I couldn't stand looking at it any more and finally last Monday I went out and bought a new tv stand. It sat in the box until yesterday. Wade had the day off so he had all day to put it together while I was working. I like this much better.

I might want to hide that power strip underneath it just a bit better though

Good Friday

Hard to believe it's already Good Friday and we'll be celebrating Easter on Sunday.

Today I thought I would take you back to the cemetery that I visited a couple weeks ago. Here's a few of my favorite shots.

I didn't get out to see the dates on the stones but this one has to be pretty old

This one I decided to convert to black and white

Another stone that caught my eye

I thought I would make the picture look a bit more dramatic

And that's all I've got for today. I'm off tomorrow and then have to work on Sunday but it will only be a partial day. Amanda will be cooking Easter dinner so I can come home and have someone else do all the work.

I see the moon

The moon sees me. Then the moon hides behind some thin clouds when I go for my camera

It's not perfect but I kind of liked the looks of it

It was mint to be

So those little baskets I showed you yesterday were supposed to have something put in the eggs. Turned out the eggs were a bit too small for what I had in mind. Out goes the eggs and a handmade treat went in to little snack sized baggies and stuffed in to the basket along with a couple other candies.

I found a recipe for pastel mint patties that sounded rather easy and I wanted to give them a try. I followed the recipe exactly although I used regular food coloring and not the more expensive gel or paste as recommended.  These are my mints.

When I made these I colored the yellow first and needed quite a bit to get the color. Next I did the pink and since I only had red I figured just a few drops would do it. I should have used way less on that. I probably could have gone less on the blue and green too. The other thing was the extract. I used peppermint and I only added 1 tsp. They do have a mint flavor to them but I think if I were to do them again I would add just a touch more for a stronger flavor.

For Peat's sake

One last picture of the chick and bunny pins and then I'll move on to something else. Rather than just give each of them a pin I made little baskets using peat pots. I left the pots as is rather than paint them. I added a handle using chenille sticks (or pipe cleaners if you prefer) then I glued some lace around the top. The plastic eggs are empty right now but tomorrow I have something I can put in them.

Here's the whole gang

Now that the Easter projects are over I'll have to move on to something else. Not sure what yet.

Easter's on it's way

Here comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail. Hippity hoppity Easter's on it's way

After the chick pins were done I made some bunny pins.

What came first

In preparation for Easter I got started on a little project for the girls at work. Today I'll show you what I did first and tomorrow what I did after that. I suppose there will even be a third post to show you how I put it all together.

For today you get chicks.

These are a 3" egg shape made to look like chicks. Or they are supposed to look like chicks any way. They have a pin back on them. My french knot eyes are a little wonky but it's because they were just hatched and still haven't fully adjusted to the world yet. That's my story and I"m sticking to it.

Thinking

As I sit here sipping my cup of hot tea and preparing this post my thoughts turn to spring time. This is what spring looks like in Pennsylvania

I can't help thinking how much I really hate snow. This was taken Friday afternoon. It was snowing when I woke up and headed off to work yesterday morning. It had stopped by the time I left work but it still looked more like winter than spring. On the bright side, I hear we're headed for a warm up now.

It has arrived

Online tracking tells me that the package has arrived at it's destination so I can now show you the last recycled denim project I made

This went to a blogger friend who has westies of course.

I did the hand stitched wording and the westie a long long time ago and the whole project just wasn't going together as I had pictured it in my mind. The two pieces got put away and never finished. When I started cutting apart the jeans and finding things to do with the denim I thought of this again. I sewed the words on to the denim then the ribbon across the bottom. Lastly I added the little westie pup and plopped it in a frame. I made sure that Gibbs didn't see this before I put it in the padded envelope for mailing. I didn't want him to get offended since he's not a westie.

Take a word

The take a word challenge this week was botanical. So I did this

Again I took images from snappygoat.com merged them then added filters and textures. I may have gone a little dark around the edges but it was fun playing

Just a few

I won't bore you with all 142 pictures that I took on Monday. Besides not all of them are worth showing.
To highlight what I did after taking pictures of Gibbs on the deck.

I drove down a back road and pulled over to take a picture of the countryside

A little further up the road I pulled over to take pictures of the horses

Next I stopped off at a little park but I didn't really get any great pictures there. After that I went to an old cemetery and took some pictures. This is a newer stone but I have pictures of much older ones. Maybe those will be for another done

On my way out this was the view going up the hill. I just liked the way it looked.

142

Know why I'm smiling?

Because yesterday for my day off it was a beautiful day. The temperature was up to 70 and I got a chance to play with my camera. I took a total of 142 pictures. Who was my first subject? Well Gibbs of course.

As soon as he came home from the groomers I pulled out the camera and we went out on the deck. He looks pretty grumpy for a guy who just got a spiffy hair cut and a new bandana.

I tweaked this picture just a bit 

How about a side by side comparison of the before and after.