The next day

 The day after Labor Day I had off. It was nice to have two days in a row off from work. As much as I enjoyed that I was having a rough day. Lots of little things have been going wrong and it was getting me down. Even Gibbs was on my last nerve. 

I finally was at the end of my ropes, put Gibbs in his side of the basement and went outside to play in the dirt. I planted the mums that I got the day before.

It's not too easy to see where they are here

I planted two in the center.

And the third one on the end. I'm not very good at arranging flower beds. What was already there was placed by the guys who mow my lawn. A couple years ago I had asked if they could make the front look a little better.

After I got done planting these I went through and weeded this area and the area on the other side of the front porch where the hydrangea are. I must say I was feeling a bit better by the time I was done.

The other thing I did was run to Giant Eagle which is a local grocery chain. They are a bit expensive but tend to have really good deals. Someone had posted that they had burger on sale for $2.99 a pound. I haven't seen it that price in a long time. I grabbed a couple packs to put in the freezer.

Backtracking to Labor Day

 Since I've had so many posts scheduled in advance I'm a bit slow getting to some things. I never did tell you what I did on Labor Day. Amanda and I went to a place called Al's Melons to get mums.

They had a ton of them and in so many different colors. They also had some pots that were mixed colors but they were more expensive. This picture only shows some of the mums they had. 

The ones we bought were a nice size and at a reasonable price. We actually got 5 altogether. I got 3 and Amanda got 2. If you're wondering why she got less than I did it's because she already had several sitting on her porch at home and she only needed a couple more.

After we made our purchases we stopped at Subway for lunch.

September Happy Mail

 Another month and another happy mail card has gone out. This one of course has a fall theme to it.

For the inside sentiment, I went to Bing AI and asked for something to put inside the card. It did good with this one. It's hit or miss with it when it comes to giving me what I want.

Week 13 drawings.

 Are you ready for another weeks worth of drawings? Here they are.

This batch of drawings filled the first sketch book and one of them is in the second one. The sketch books have 100 sheets so this group of drawings makes a total of 101. That doesn't include all the ones I did before I started using the sketch books.

Vintage blooms.

 This late in the season the flowers on the hydrangea start to fade in color. They don't look as pretty as they did earlier in the summer. It does give them sort of a vintage look though.

It takes 3

 Third times a charm or three strikes you're out. I'm not sure which one of those best describes this project.

I saw a saying online and it sparked an idea for a Christmas gift for my daughter in law. I decided that I was going to put the saying on a black canvas using pink lettering since that is the color scheme of her beauty shop.

I created the design in Design space and cut it on my Cricut. 

The first attempt at ironing this to the canvas didn't go well. Parts of it would not stick to the canvas and repeated attempts to make it stick caused the adhesive to seep out from underneath the vinyl

Attempt two was even worse. NONE of the heat transfer vinyl would stick at all. All it did was leave the adhesive from the vinyl on the canvas.

Third try and I bought some inexpensive glitter iron on vinyl from Dollar Tree. I thought maybe the problem was just that the HTV was too old. 

This time it stuck well but the transfer backing was very sticky so there was glitter stuck all over it. When I ironed this down to the canvas, stray glitter also stuck to the canvas. At least the entire design also stuck down. I think I'm just going to give this to her as is. It's not perfect but it's good enough.

Week 12 drawings

 Another batch of drawings.

It was a dark and stormy night

 More like it was late morning and just the sky looked a bit stormy. I couldn't help snapping pictures of the sky while I was out and about.

This one I was actually trying to take a picture of the side of that one building while I was waiting at a stop light. 

These were from Walmarts parking lot

This didn't amount to much. There were a few stray sprinkles but that was about it.

Half hearted craft projects.

I apologize if you've already seen this post. When I scheduled it I accidentally put in August 8 instead of Setpember 8. When I was told of my error, I pulled the post and rescheduled it for today. 

Neither one of these were anything I was very impressed with. They were creative efforts though so at least there was that.

Both of these used window clings that I purchased at Dollar Tree. This first one I used a framed art piece I bought a long time ago for the sole purpose of redoing it. I took the back off and covered it with scrapbook paper. Then I modpodged over top of it and applied a window cling. When it was dry I popped it back in the frame and that was it. It's ok but the window cling is a little hard to see on the background paper that I used.

This second one is the same concept as the first. I used a wood sign blank that, again, bought at Dollar Tree a long time ago. I dry brushed some white paint on then modpodge and applied the window cling. The top of it is a little bare because I intend to put a bow on it but hadn't gotten to that part yet.

Week 11 drawings

 Here we go with another weeks worth of drawings. Looks like this week was for the birds. 

A trip to Lowes

 I needed to purchase a new towel bar for the bathroom so I headed to Lowes.

I wasn't looking for something super fancy just a basic, low cost towel bar.

I made my choice and headed to the front of the store. I didn't think it looked that busy but apparently this guy had been waiting a really long time.

It got a little creepy in there when I had to walk by these guys to get to the register.

Thankfully I made it to the register safely and made my purchase.

Sometimes I surprise myself.

 I've never been one to rush holidays. I've also never been one to decorate a Christmas tree for anything other than Christmas. I suppose there is a first time for everything because I have a fall tree in my cave now.

First I broke my rule of decorating for fall too soon. Second I broke the rule about putting a tree up this early. I kind of like the way it looks.

So how did all of this happen? Well I had been wanting a pencil tree for the cave. This was another purchase using my rewards Mastercard. When it was delivered I had to put it together to see how it looked. Then, as long as it was put together I got the idea of seeing what it would look like decorated for fall. Once I got everything on it I liked the way it looked so it stayed. I've actually added a little more to it since thins picture. I found some fall fake flowers and bunched them together for a bit of a tree topper. Aside from the decorations, I'm enjoying the lights on it in the evenings.