That about sums it up

 

I suppose the day wasn't so beautiful weather wise. There were stray snowflakes falling off and on throughout the day. It was cold and dreary. 

It was beautiful in the sense that I got to sleep in, spend the morning leisurely drinking coffee and reading blogs and staying in my pajamas as long as I wanted.

The plot however was very weak because aside from that there was very little going on. 

Can you believe this is the last day of January already? I guess I'll see you again next month.

Saturday crafting

I did a little bit of crafting on Saturday morning. One of the things I made was a quick and easy Dollar Tree project. All I did was take one of the Dollar Tree candles and add a vinyl design that I cut with my Cricut.

 

I finished it off with some jute and Baker's twine wrapped around the top and then made a little bow

good for another year

I arrived early at the party yesterday and I left early. I stayed long enough to eat, and watch Presley open her presents. I bought her a child's digital camera since she had so much fun playing with mine at Christmas. I could tell how impressed she was with it when it hit the floor as soon as it came out of the bag.

 

After presents it was time to sing Happy Birthday

 

And that was my cue to say my goodbyes and head on out the door

Party

So today is Presley's birthday party. I know this may sound horrible but I do not want to go. I will go, but I don't want to. Why? Several reasons but that may be a story for another day.

Instead I'll show you her finished birthday card and the gift bag that I decorated. The theme for her birthday party is Moana so I found an image online and did a print and cut then glued it to a gift bag.

 

Here is her finished birthday card

 I absolutely hate being called Nana however that's what they have decided they are going to call me. I did not have a choice in the matter. Like it or not, that's how I signed the card. Then I cut her name out and glue the letters to the envelope

 I finished it all off with a birthday girl pin that I found at Dollar General

Random

 I'm in a rut for blog material so I decided to go random.

I found a site called Word Counter  and they have a random word generator. I suppose the purpose of this is more to give a person suggestions on words to use in their writing. For today, it's purpose is to give this person something to write about.

The above is a screenshot from the website to show what my 5 random words were. Using all 5 words I came up with the following. I have liquid space where my brain should be. It gets all wiggly and makes me feel warlike.

I promise I will try to do better tomorrow.

An unintentional celebration

Tuesday was national peanut butter day. I had no idea and thought that I was just being lazy when I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner. Yes, I actually ate that for my dinner. I didn't have the ambition or energy to make anything else. 

So imagine my surprise when I was scrolling through Facebook and saw this.

I wasn't being lazy at all. I was celebrating.

Nothing.

 It's a slow blog day so this post is about nothing.

As an American, it makes me so sad to see that nothing is made in USA anymore. I just bought this new TV and it says "Built-in Antenna." I don't even know where that is.

My mother always told me that there's nothing worse than running with scissors. Now that I'm older, I realize there's one worse thing: scissoring with the runs.

I just discovered that the word "nothing" is a palindrome... Backwards it spells "gnihton", which also means nothing.

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.

This and that

 Friday it looked like we were in for some snow accumulation but it never amounted to much. Sunday it

snowed off and on throughout the day. It was after I got home from work on Sunday that it really started. I was able to appreciate how pretty it really was since I was in for the night.

I decided on cut up lottery tickets for that bottle I gave new boss. I grabbed some out of the garbage and started cutting. I didn't fill it completely because I got tired of cutting. I told one of the other employees to tell new boss I needed to talk to him when he got there. He came over and I handed him a bag and told him I made him something. He pulled the bottle out and had that "what's this for" look on his face. I told him to turn it over and that's when he saw the 800 number. Then I told him it had cut up losing lottery tickets in it. He thought it was pretty funny and he said he would finish filling it up with his losers.

Yesterday it was nice being able to stay home. It was cold out there and the snow was still falling occasionally. I got a nice leisurely start to the day and carried that theme out for the rest of the day.

I did manage to do a little bit more decluttering though. I have now filled a total of 5 garbage bags. I'm feeling pretty good about that. I'll admit that I probably could get rid of a whole lot more than what I have but I've done well at not hanging on to everything. I'm confident that I will have this room will be finished before the end of the month. That seems like a long time to clean out one room but at least it's getting done.

Using what I've got

The other day at work the boss's son, aka the new boss, said to me "you need to start monitoring my credit card usage on the lottery machine". Yes, he loves to play the lottery. As a bit of a gag gift I took a water bottle that I had purchased a long time ago. These were selling really cheap at Walmart and I kept buying them for some reason.  I guess I thought I was going to gift everyone a water bottle.

 

I used my cricut to cut the problem gambling helpline number then I put it on the bottle.

We have a bag sitting next to the lottery machine for people to throw away their losing lottery tickets. I'm thinking of grabbing a bunch of those and cutting them into little squares and then filling the bottle with them. It's either that or maybe some hard candy. I haven't decided that yet. 

Recycling project

Yesterday I decided to throw together a quick gift using an old peanut butter jar. Yes, I buy the cheap generic peanut butter. I'm not choosy so I don't choose Jif.

I filled the jar with 1 2 3 cake mix. Made a label using the print and cut feature on my cricut and then applied it to the jar along with a direction label.

I also purchased a cheap set of measuring spoons. I only needed the tablespoon one so I took the ring from the set and glued it to the lid to hang the measuring spoon from. 

Then I finished off the gift with these ramekin dishes I found at Dollar Tree. They are the perfect size for making the cake. I had tried to use ones that I already had but they were a little too small. You can also just make this in a coffee cup.

If you've never heard of 1 2 3 cake, it's an angel food cake mix (must be the kind that only has one bag in the mix. If it has 2 bags it won't work) and one other kind of cake any kind. You mix the two together and store in an airtight container. To make it you mix 3 Tbs of the cake mix, 2 Tbs of water and microwave for 1 minute. Sometimes I add some chocolate chips or a little bit of peanut butter. It's a quick little dessert. 

I'm late

 Normally this would have published at 12:30, but I didn't feel like going anywhere near the computer yesterday. Besides I'm really just winging this right now because I have nothing to post.

I haven't gone near the room I'm working on decluttering in 2 days. I really need to get myself going and get back in there.

Yesterday was a long and boring day at work. I was done with all my work by noon. I found enough stuff to keep me busy until 2:00 and finally decided to just leave. I only had an hour left but just didn't feel like trying to find anything else to do.

I did a Walmart run after work. Friday I started a list on my phone but never finished it. I picked up everything that was on the list, a couple things that I thought of while I was there but still on my way home I suddenly thought "darn, I should have gotten that".

That brings us to today. It's cold and white outside. I plan on doing the laundry and visiting all of you. Other than that it'll be a whole lot of just chilling out.

TGIF

I see napping in our future

Some days

Saw this on Facebook and not only do some days really feel like this but this made me laugh. Hope you find as funny as I did.

work in progress

I thought I would pull something out of my work in progress box to show you what I'm working on. I have three cards that I'm in the process to making and one of them is for Presley's birthday. I started by printing and cutting two of this birthday cake image.

Since the original image only had three candles and Presley is turning five I cut two candles off of one of the images and then glued them on to the other. From there I fancied it up a bit with some glitter pens.

 I also cut the number five three times from White card stock. I glued all the layers together and then used markers to color it.

Now all that's left to do is to put it all together on a card.

Progress can be messy

Although it may not look like it, this really is progress.

 I've already gone through quite a bit of stuff and have sorted things into piles. When I get overwhelmed I walk away. When I start to feel the itch to do some cleaning out I go up, grab something to sort through, and take it downstairs. It's slow going but at least I'm getting somewhere. I've already filled two garbage bags. I'm sure there is way more that I could throw out but then again I could have saved it all.

early to bed early to rise

I don't know how healthy, wealthy, and wise I am but early to rise sure does make me tired. Yesterday I started work an hour early again which means I started at 4:00 a.m.. this week I wasn't quite as tired as I was last week and I managed to stay awake when I got home. The absolute best part about starting work that early is that I get to leave at 1:00 in the afternoon.. 

We finished off the day chilling out in the living room because the Internet connection on the TV in the cave was having issues.

How I spent my day off

Like any other day off, I started with coffee and reading blogs. I decided to get an earlier start than normal. I got my laundry done, folded and put away. I also cleaned up the cave. 

 I managed to do a little bit more decluttering but not a whole lot. I even squeezed in some crafting. 

This box has pieces of the cards that I started. One birthday card and a couple Valentines cards.

I can't remember where I read it but someone had been talking about using a "work in progress" box to hold everything they needed for the project they were currently working on. I'm thinking that that's what I'll try and do in an effort to keep myself more organized. We'll see how that goes

The latest doodle.

I did another doodle at work the other day. This one is a cute little fox.

He's already joined the help desk team.

 

These guys are sitting on my table at work. It takes so little to amuse me.

Changes

When Gibbs was just a young guy, he very rarely settled down. He would pace around the room, lay down for a second then get back up and pace some more. When he did lay down it wasn't for very long and it was either at the other end of the couch from where I was sitting or on the floor. These days he does a lot more sleeping than he used to. He also is able to lay down and calm down quite easily. He'll still lay at the other end of the couch on some occasions but lately he's been getting up close and personal and curling up right next to me

I'm not quite sure if he likes being close to me or he just likes how soft my blanket it. There are times when he'll be laying at the other end of the couch and if I pull the blanket down and cover up with it he'll get up and move so he can lay on the blanket.

Progress

I'm feeling quite accomplished.

 Yesterday when I came home from work I convinced myself to do a little work on the declutter project. My goal is to get the two spare bedrooms in my house taken care of. One is my craft room and the other is the room where all the overflow craft stuff and anything else that doesn't have a home goes. They've gotten quite out of control and I found the job of cleaning them up quite overwhelming.

 The plan when I went in was to tackle one section. I tore apart the one wall at Christmas time so that I could use the crates for my Village. The crates actually are being used in the craft room as shelving. I took everything off put things into piles and will eventually get things put back. The last assignment I gave myself for the day was to go through a box full of colored pens and markers and throw away any that didn't work.

Today is garbage day so I had a bag filled to go outside. Now if only I can keep this up.

Tea time

Saturday Amanda came over and brought me a present. She picked it up on clearance at the after Christmas sales.

There are 12 different flavors and 8 of each flavor. 

The first one I tried was the winter chai. It was pretty good. I've also tried one that was orange something. It was good but it didn't taste like orange at all.

Just chit chat

Ever since my boss passed away I am the first one into the store every morning. Sunday is my least favorite day of the week. This past Sunday, I thought it would be a great idea to start work an hour early that way I could leave an hour early. That meant I got to work and punched in at 4:00 a.m.. it was a heavenly 3 hours all by myself and I accomplished quite a bit. The only problem was that when I got home I was really tired. That's why there was no post yesterday. As soon as I got home I hit the couch and slept off and on (mostly on) until midnight. I never went near my computer.

 Monday for my day off I did very little. I did go out for a bit and stopped at Dollar Tree to browse. They had an end cap of all kinds of things that were new to the store

 Dollar Tree seems to be stepping up their game on crafting items. They've added quite a few real nice things. 

I also satisfied a craving that I've had recently. Make that two cravings because the other day I made buffalo chicken dip. My other craving was for chicken stir fry. That was my dinner yesterday and boy was it delicious

I'll eat leftovers for the next two days and I'll put a little container in the freezer for a quick meal another night.

Through the window

Our weather had been a bit on the warm side for January but now we're back to snow. Saturday I spent the day inside trying to stay warm. The outside world was only seen through the window

Everyone who knows me, knows I don't like snow but I have to admit that everything looked pretty covered in white.

New hire

Help desk guy was training a new hire yesterday.

Personally I think the two of them were getting just a little too cozy. I would think that kind of fraternization would be frowned upon. I don't think the new guy will last long though. When I tried to ask him for help he gave me the cold shoulder

Therapy

When one is feeling down, there is no shame in seeking professional help.

I spoke to the nice man at the help desk and he recommended doodling.