A fun experiment on my day off

I did a little experimenting in my craft room on my day off Monday. I've been seeing a lot of shadow box projects and wanted to try them. My biggest problem was that I was limited to what I had on hand. I didn't want to have to go out and buy any new supplies. I started by coming up with a design in Cricut design space. Next step was to cut out the design in white cardstock. Then I put it all together in a cheap Dollar Tree frame, layered in some battery operated lights and backed it with some blue cardstock. It's far from perfect, there are plenty of flaws, but this was an experiment to see what worked and what didn't. Now I see where I need to make some changes and adjustments for the next time I make this. Without further ado here is my project

 

Here it is with the lights on.

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Let's zoom in a Little Closer

 

One final picture with a bit of an explanation on where I need to make improvements.

 

The layer behind the deer had too much going on in the center. It makes it hard to see the antlers on the one deer. Secondly look closely at the deer. Do you see the dog hair hanging off of it? If this was going to be a gift I would definitely have to make sure not to trap any Gibbs hair in the final product.

Well that wraps up 2020. I'll see you all next year.

A little cleaning out

Monday I spent my day off doing multiple things. I spent a lot of time drinking coffee and playing on the computer. Next I did a little crafting experiment which I'll show you tomorrow. I also did some cleaning out. I went through my bedroom closet and cleared out all the clothes that no longer fit me or I no longer wear. They are now sitting in an overflowing laundry basket waiting for me to bring some boxes home to work.  I still have dresser drawers to go through as well as a cedar chest but this was a start.

 I also cleaned out a couple kitchen cupboards and got rid of some outdated food that was taking up space. Would you believe corn syrup that had a best by date of 2009?

I'm hoping that 2021 can finally be the year that I get determined enough to clean all of the junk out of my house

snow snow and more snow

It started snowing late afternoon on Christmas Eve. It snowed all day Christmas Day, and part of Saturday. I'm not sure exactly how much snow we got but it was over a foot and a half

I went out Christmas day to shovel a spot for Gibbs then to do the sidewalk, brush off the car and start on the driveway. While I was cleaning off the car a friend of Wade's did stop and plow. I was very grateful. Saturday there was quite a bit more snow out there again so I went out to start the process all over again. While I was shoveling the driveway, the neighbor across the street came over with his shovel and helped. Again I was very grateful. 

Christmas

Christmas Eve I worked until 6. At one minute to six a customer came in the store to get a quick ham. Unfortunately she couldn't find her card ran to her car then came back in and ran through the store trying to find it and by the time I punched out it was closer to twenty after 6. On top of that I had to brush snow off my car. When I got home my son was already there waiting for me. It was a nice evening with my son Presley my daughter and her fiancé. I only have one quick picture today because every time I tried to take a picture of Presley she said no no no. After presents were opened, Presley decided that she wanted to go home to see her mommy so my son packed up and headed home.

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Amanda and Rob stuck around for a little while longer, then it was time for them to head home as well.

Happy Boxing day

 I'm late posting and I've got no plan for where this post is going. I think I'll just make it short and sweet and be back tomorrow. Maybe by then all my blogging thoughts will be dug out and I'll have dug myself out from all the snow that has fallen here since Christmas eve.

Merry Christmas

I made you a little Hershey kiss Christmas tree. Have a merry happy kind of day.

 

Happy Christmas eve

 I'm all out of material so I'll dig into the Facebook finds. Maybe Santa will bring me blog material for Christmas.

I have to work till 6:00pm today and then I have the next two days off. It'll be like a mini vacation having 2 days in a row.

a sweet tote

Or is it a tote for sweets? These hold 6 Hershey nuggets

more ornaments

I did some more playing with wood and paper. Again, these are cut files from Jennifermaker.com.

 

Here are the finished ornaments. I'm not real crazy about the way I painted the wood disc on the tree ornaments but they'll do. 

Christmas in heaven

This year I set up one special chair so that all my family members who are spending Christmas in heaven can stop by and sit a while.

There's all kinds of crafts that I have seen with the chair and a poem  that goes along with it. I just used the chair. Here is the poem

Christmas in heaven

what do they do?

They come down to earth

to spend it with you.

So save them a seat

just one empty chair

You may not see them

but they will be there.

If you follow me on Facebook you may have seen my post about having a hard time this year. This is not the first year to spend Christmas without Wade or my parents or my brother, but it's hitting me big time this year. My entire family is now gone and I'm all alone. I don't think I have ever felt so isolated and alone as I do this year. I thank God for the people I work with because they keep me going. I'm also so grateful for my blogging friends. Those of you who stop by here and leave me comments or send me emails are a lifeline to me. I cherish each and every one of you. And just maybe, that little chair will bring some comfort this holiday season. It sits on my tv stand and each night I can imagine who just might be spending a little time with me. 

The nativity

I set this up on my hutch and didnt have room for the manger

 This is the set we had when I was growing up minus some sheep and camels that didn't survive the hot attic that they used to be stored in. I think my parents had this before I was born because I have a picture of me on my first Christmas sitting in front of the tree and this set is in the background

Scenes from The village

The village is all set up on top of my fake fireplace

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Just a few close-ups from the village

Why?

Why would anyone create a toy like this? And why would anyone buy it?

 

I can think of much better things to spend $20 on.

lighting up

No I didn't take up smoking again. I did put some lights up outside though. I'm a bit too old to climb up on the roof to string the old fashioned lights but I do have some of those spot lights that shine multi lights all over the house.

After I had these stuck in the ground and adjusted I took a quick picture but it still wasn't perfectly dark out

I tried to take another picture after it got really dark but it makes it really hard to see the house all you see are the lights

My tree

I'm writing this post on Saturday and scheduling it for today. So as of this writing my tree is up but not yet decorated

 

On another note, several of you asked yesterday how I fell. Well I was in the office and stepped up on a 6"high step stool to get something off the bulletin board. When I stepped back down the door on the cart with the printer/copier was slightly open and I bumped into it and it sort of knocked me off my balance. I was told by the person who saw me that it was a very graceful fall and sort of in slow motion.

Oh and Anni, I don't think you need to worry about me talking to Gibbs until I start believing that he's talking back to me.

Tumbler

When you hear the word Tumblr what do you think of? Do you think of a drinking glass? 

Or maybe you think of an acrobat?

Well I'm betting the last thing you think of is me.

 Last Friday that's exactly what I was. Not only did I fall while at work, but I did it in front of witnesses. One of the people who saw me fall asked if I was alright and I said yes, nothing hurt but my pride but I'm old so I'm probably going to feel it tomorrow. Once it was established that I was not hurt all of us had a good laugh for the rest of the day. If nothing else, I'm good at being able to laugh at myself. The oddest part of all of this was that when I got home from work, not only did I clean my house but I put up my Christmas tree as well. I said to Gibbs "darn maybe I should fall every Friday at work."

A little something on my table

Changing out what I have on my dining room table makes me happy

 

You might even say it brings me joy

Spur-of-the-moment wreath

When I took down my fall decorations my front door was a little bare. I have a Christmas wreath but it's been up for several years and it's showing a little wear. On the spur of the moment I pulled out a fake pine wreath that I had in my craft stash and just stuck some random items into it. Nothing is glued down nothing is permanent but now I have a wreath on my front door

Wood and paper ornament

This is another project using a free cut file from jennifermaker.com. I cut out the paper shape and glued it to a three and a quarter inch wood disc

It was kind of plain so I used a silver glitter marker and drew the lines of the snowflake. Then I glued on a snowflake jewel in the center

Can't get my act together

I just don't seem to be able to talk myself into pulling out Christmas decorations this year. I did however finally put away the fall decorations. I changed out my fall plates for my snowman plates that hang on my kitchen wall. Other than that this is all I've put out

 Maybe This Year I'll stick with winter decorations instead of Christmas decorations and then there won't be any rush to get it put away

Everyone's a Critic

I made a really nice 3D paper ornament that was a free Cut file from jennifermaker.com. The other day Gibbs was up on my desk and the little furball decided he was going to take my ornament and make a few adjustments. Unfortunately I didn't take a before picture but here's what it looked like after he was done with it.

He was pretty pleased with himself but I thought my version was much nicer.

If you want to see what it should look like you can follow the link to the website where I got the cut file. https://jennifermaker.com/paper-christmas-ornaments/

My tree

I put up not one, but two trees the other day. Ok, so they're paper and only 7 inches high but its a start right?

These were a free cut file from jennifermaker.com.

There is supposed to be acetate behind the cut out sections (i read that some people were using wax paper) but I didn't realize I forgot to put that on until I was taking the picture. These fit right over a battery operated tea light

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