Just Covering Up

I made some chair bags out of old jeans and straps off a backpack.

Tangle Time

I recently found a weekly Zentangle class that meets in the evening, once a week, online, and it's free. I found it in the Events section on Facebook. However, the website, Tangle Addicts, is the best place to get the weekly links.

This was what I created this evening.

I really enjoy Zentangle. I've done a few in Art Express, one of my internships during graduate school for my counseling degree. Zentangle is basically just repeated doodles. It's super easy and fun to create. 

Butterfly

At art journaling club. I don't think mine is beautiful but I'm happy with it.

Lake Flag

At the lake for drawing time today. I'm not an artist but I'm just trying to use this as time to get comfortable with documenting life without expectations of perfection.

Crafty Boy

Spending my afternoon altering oversized 'boy-cut' t-shirts to fit me.

Back to Blogging

For the past 3 or 4 days, I've been getting things cleaned up here on the blog.  As my final stop in the blog-o-sphere, Circa 1975 has been awhile in the making.  I've blogged here there and everywhere since August 2005 (before that, I was building personal websites and playing around with HTML).  I've had this blog set up for awhile now (at least a few years) but had only processed about half of the posts I imported from all of my other blog archives.  I've been busy... finishing up undergrad and starting graduate school.  Now nearing the end of my last summer semester in the counseling program and getting a daily reprieve from the symptoms (compulsive food and exercise behaviors, anxiety, and procrastination) of my illness, I felt a spark to start creating again.  So, I had to get my blog posts cleaned up and processed.

It's been an amazing process to go back through all of these old posts.  There are so many memories, both good and bad, here.  I kept them all.  There were a few things that I lost, like a few handfuls of Keek videos, which can't be recovered in any way.  That's a little sad.  That's what happens with new social media start-ups though.  Here one day, gone the next.  It's a reminder that I should back up everything.

Now, to fill in the spaces where I wasn't heavily blogging, I'm going back through my Facebook memories and pulling information from there to post here.  Once moved, I'm deleting my old Facebook memories.  I really want this to be the one place that I keep a journal of everything.  One day, I hope to share this with my daughter and husband.  But for now, it's just me and anyone who stops by to read.

I'm also starting to clean up and organize all of my digital photos.  I've been able to add some photos to old blog posts.  As I process the photos, I will add more.  I may backdate some just for posterity's sake.  If a photo is from 2000, I think it's a little odd to post it in 2019.  I wouldn't do that in a physical journal.  So, why do it here.

Now, I must pull myself away from this very fun project and finish up an assignment due tomorrow.

Altered Literature Project - Little Red Riding Hood

Just finished up this super cool project for class tonight. My group decided to showcase this "altered literature" project using the classic story of Little Red Riding hood. I was charged with creating Granny's Facebook page. One of my group-mates made an Instagram for Little Red, and the other made a Twitter account for her internet stalker, The Wolf. We wanted to take the theme of the project (updating a classic children's tale) and tie it into the discussion of the dangers of social media that permeated the first half of the semester. 

UPDATE: FYI. My group won the contest... we each received a $15 gift card. There was some stiff competition, and we came out on top. Needless to say, I know how to "play the game." Teachers/professors love it when you tie things together like this!

New Kitchen Hand Towels

Serged up 6 new kitchen hand towels from an old table cloth yesterday. Still need to weave in the ends of the serged threads on 2 and then all will be done and ready to use.

Daily Photo: Nightswimming

I absolutely love how this before and after turned out.  This is the picture I took of one of my back steps after the rain yesterday morning.  A little bit of time and the aid of Ribbit and I turned it into art.  :)

Daily Photo: Desire

This is another one from my archives.  I find it ironic that we had a lotto ticket behind the Marilyn Monroe magnet.  I'm pretty sure that's why I named it Desire.

Daily Photo: Decay

Dipping back into my archives for a few days and pulling out some of my favorite pictures.  Back before Ribbit, there was Picnik.  I'm sure you remember the whole Google bought Picnik and shut it down hoopla.  Ribbit is Picnik, reinvented, and giving us the whole shebang for free right now.  Anyway, my point is that this picture was edited and altered in Picnik, before Google closed it down, but I could do the same now with Ribbit.

I'm going to put photoart on my list of things to get back into this year.  I had a lot of fun doing this.  I have a few others, too, that I'll be sharing here soon.

Go Make Your Bed... Shine Your Sink... Or Whatever

By now, I think, that most women have some knowledge of FlyLady and her tips, tricks, and schedules to get and keep your house clean and organized.  She's great.  I've taken quite a few of her ideas and tweaked them to fit me, my home, my lifestyle, and my personality over the years.

One of those things I've taken and made my own is her insistence on shining the sink every night.  My sink can't be shined.  It's old.  It's really, really old.  Think old metal cabinets old.  What's that, from the 1950s or something?  There's that and there's the fact that Dodger has been a painter for most of the time that we've lived here, 16 years now, and we clean his brushes and roller covers in that sink.  If I scrub hard, I can usually free it from the random paint stains but in no way, shape, or form can it be shined.

Besides, I'm not really "at home" in my kitchen or any kitchen, for that matter.  The kitchen is really Dodger's domain.  He's a fabulous cook.  He's one of those people who uses food and cooking in a creative way.  He doesn't ever use a recipe and comes up with some of the best tasting food I've ever had the pleasure to put in my mouth... I like to eat.

What I have found, is that I LOVE having my bed made everyday.  I make it within 30 minutes of crawling out of it each morning.  I love my bedspread, that Dodger brought home from a client last summer, and the throw pillows that I recovered last fall.  Making my bed helps me set the tone for the rest of my day.  If I have a bad moment during the day, I can go flop myself on top of my beautiful bed and snuggle up a bit under the handmade crocheted afghan, that I also keep on the bed, and feel a little bit better and tucked away from the harsh world outside my bedroom door.

What you also can't tell is that in between the beautiful handmade bedspread and top sheet is a well-loved reminder of some of the most wonderful memories of my childhood.  Sometime last year, I found my old Smurfs sleeping blanket in a box in my garage.  I've had that sleeping blanket since I was a young child.  I used it every summer on family vacations and other camping trips.  It's witnessed tons of my most precious memories.  It's insides are all balled up now and it's faded and has a few holes but I could not bring myself to throw it away.  So now it's tucked away where it can't be seen but it's still useful to me.  It helps keep me warm at night, still.

Making my bed daily is my equivalent to FlyLady's shining of the sink.

So, if you don't like your sink, your kitchen, or for whatever reason shining your sink doesn't "get you off", then find what does!  Find one thing that you can do everyday that makes you smile, makes you happy, and sets the tone for the rest of your day.  Find the one thing that you can go to throughout the day to admire and to find peace in when things get a little rough.

FlyLady is great and all.... but what she recommends is only great for you if it works for you.  If it doesn't, then change it.  Find your FlyLady equivalent.

You'd never know just by looking at them that one of those pillows is a Scooby-Doo pillow and another is a Spongebob pillow.

The hand appliqued bed coverlet that one of my husband's clients sent home with him one day. They were getting rid of it. I absolutely love it. It's direct from India, which is where his clients are from. What you can't see is that underneath that coverlet is my childhood Smurfs sleeping bag that I can't bear to get rid of.

365 Project: Day 24

365 Project: Day 23

365 Project: Day 18

I decided to drive through the cemetery down the road today.

I think the dreariness of the day added to the look of the picture.

I ran out of battery power or I would have taken more shots.

My World Tuesday

Shadows

A few other shots from today, edited with Picnik.

Winter Night Shots

My World Tuesday, January 11, 2011

It was a day of no obligations... nowhere to go... nothing we had to do.

I love days like this, even when it's cold outside.

Before & After: Scentsy Burner

365 Project: Day 9