the worst of weeks, the best of weeks - lots of photos

Last weekend (NSD and Mother's Day) started out so nice - DH brought me a bouquet of roses, I scrapped, and then finished a painting - see above - it's a mixed media piece with 3 layers of watercolor orchids and leaves, and then knotted ribbons and yarns for roots (the photo doesn't really capture how bright it is.)

I did this layout for the doodling challenge at BPS

We had a lovely dinner of shrimp, French bread, and salad

I washed the dishes and then took my cup of tea and chocolate mousse into the living room to enjoy

BUT

instead I was suddenly overtaken by extreme nausea and rushed to the toilet to throw up

That night I was so sick and again on Monday morning - I had to call in sick to work and then threw up a few sips of tea and returned to bed and slept until 3pm - I was able to eat a little soup for dinner

Tuesday I was weak as a kitten but by Wednesday I was stronger and able to go to the art studio where I began to paint some cactus flowers

This is the beginning of a new mixed media piece - I have begun painting the background on a bigger sheet of paper and plan to make the cactus stickers somewhat 3-d, perhaps with toothpicks or?

On the way home from the art studio, I realized that my car a/c wasn't working properly - it blows cold out the passenger side but not the driver's side - I looked it up on the computer and will try a couple of things but at this point, I just don't have the money to get it fixed so it looks like I will be biting the bullet this summer - did I mention that I live in south Florida?! Once June starts and everything really shuts down here (many things are already closed some days of the week and almost all of the snowbirds are gone), I will probably only be going out a couple of days a week - the museum is closed on Monday so I won't be working there and the art studio on Wed is also shut down until Sept. So it isn't as bad as it would be if I had to leave the house every day.

Anyway, by Thursday I was totally back to my crazy little wired self and was able to run errands and paint. AND we actually had about 20 minutes of rain at my house late Thursday afternoon. I heard a sound outside and wondered what it was - we are in the midst of a terrible drought so the rain was a true blessing (and when I mentioned at work, no one else had had rain - so strange!) I worked on Friday at the used book store where I discovered a bundle of papers that someone had thrown in the trash bin - it was an old scrapbook with newspapers from 1940!!!! That baby came home with me!

Today has been a super day - a slice of sweet Florida cantaloupe for breakfast, cleaned the lanai, took 2 old rattan chairs and some other stuff to St Vincent de Paul and then scored majorly at their shop

I got this cool little loom and the loops for 20 cents - I used to make potholders with one like this when I was a little girl

this pile of books for $1.70 or something like that - and the really cool thing is the very top book by Georgette Heyer Footsteps in the Dark is one I have been looking for quite a while - I read about a new edition of it on Bas Bleu but our library doesn't have it (and with the budget cuts, they no longer do interlibrary loans) so I was super super excited to find it (it doesn't take much to get me excited!!) I also bought a Hot Cotton linen and cotton shirt for $2.50 - It's a black and white plaid and will look fantastic with my black capris, and I remember seeing it at Steinmart last year - yay!

Then I went to the library as they had some books for me

I have read great things about A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness - it sounds like my kind of reading - witches, alchemy, and vampires but all wrapped up in a very literary mystery.

Everyday Icon is a book about Michelle Obama's wonderful style

and I think most bloggers have read or heard about the Pioneer Woman

Drawing Conclusions is the brand new Brunetti mystery by Donna Leon

I also just finished the brand new Jacqueline Winspear mystery A Lesson in Secrets - very good!

I just finished baking a small banana cake (one very soft banana and I just can't bear to throw food away.) I used an old recipe (from 1930) that's in an old cookbook that my mother gave me a long time ago - it is the best cookbook and has so many delicious but inexpensive old recipes - waffles, banana cake, carrot cake, the best pie crust, and wonderful cupcakes.

The rest of the day looks to be a busy one - knitting on my African vest (pix tomorrow), pork scallopini, hot caramelized Vidalia onion roasted potatoes, and salad for dinner, and reading later this afternoon and evening while DH watches the Players golf championship and the Yankees/Red Sox game on tv 

Today is just a really super day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks so much for reading and I hope that you have a wonderful day,

Chris

A few peeks around my studio

A little triangle knitting

cutting out fabric for a new quilt - lots of fun colors - turquoise, orange, yellow, tan, and lime green

lots of watercolor practice

We will be having a Scrapgal blog hop next week and a Fall Haul crop - lots of fun projects, games and challenges - I might just give a few peeks this coming week

I am also co-chairman of the October Scrapgal contests so I am busy, busy, busy creating Halloween projects - so love working with the MME Haunted flocked papers and the G45 Halloween in Wonderland papers.

I have also been reading some new books - Three Stations by Martin Cruz Smith and Faithful Place by Tana French - both very good.  I look forward to getting Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins once the library gets it.  Are you reading anything fun or interesting right now? I would love to know.

 Hope your week is going well!

That time of the month - again!

It's the beginning of June, and another month of ScrapGal challenges and contests! We have a contest going this month called the Craft Fair with lots of sketches and other cool contests, including a merry-go-round - be sure to come over and join in the fun and prizes! The above layout was done based on the sketch for the Fun House contest - Mandy did some great sketches so be sure to check them out each week http://www.scrapgal.com/scraptalk/ . My layout is done on Prima paper with Prima alphas. canvas shape, and laces.

Our manufacturer of the month is BoBunny so go to your stash, dig out some BoBunny, scrap it, and post it in the ScrapGal gallery - you might just be our winner!!!! Here are my 2 BoBunny layouts:

the top one is done on Back to basics paper with Delilah rub-ons and hand cut outs from a page of Delilah paper. I colored the plain alphas with copic markers.  the bottom layout is on Back to basics paper with a painted Glimmer chip scroll that I cut into pieces. the flowers are cut from a Trader Joe's shopping bag.

And now ----- the http://candyshoppedesigns.blogspot.com/  June 1 challenge Razberry Dazzle in honor of a past Lollipop Girl. Check out the color palette - really funky with raspberry, lime, black, and white

My layout is done on Stampington paper with some older K&co chipboard butterflies and sticker along with a handmade ribbon flower and a Kiki arts bling-y heart - so perfect!  Be sure to check out Lynette's latest kit offering

Hope you are having a great week!!!! I am feeling so much better and have been super creative this week - unfortunately I can't show you much of what I have created right now but soon.......... I will say that I have returned a bit to my fabric roots and have been playing with copying photos on fabric-paper so look for some different things coming out of my studio in the near future.  I have also been avidly knitting on my blade scarf and it is really starting to look like a leaf - I will take some close-up pix very soon to share.
I am also listening to Glass Houses by Rachel Caine - the first book in the Morganville Vampire series. Chez recommended these to satisfy that "blood thirst" and so far I am enjoying this one - our library has quite a few of the books in the series so I should be good to go for most of the summer.

I will be back this weekend - I have a busy time the next few days - tonight is our Art club meeting, tomorrow I get my teeth cleaned (I hate going to the dentist!), Sat work at the gift shop, and Mon go to the doctor for a check up. Next Thursday I start a new painting class with many of my artist friends - so looking forward to that!

Thanks for reading and
ttfn,
Chris

So, what are you reading?

So, what are you reading right now? I love to read and always have. So far this year I have read 74 books, but last year I read 96 so I doubt if I make it to that amount. Some of my favorites this year have been Death comes for the Fat man by Reginald Hill, The Private Patient by P D James, several Australian murder mysteries by Kerry Greenwood, some fantasies by Gillian Summers, the Night Villa by Carol Goodman (her books are very good!), Jacqueline Winspear's latest mystery, the Blue Blood vampire series by Melissa de la Cruz (in the Twilight vein), Ariana Franklin's latest, Laurie R. King's latest (and then I reread her entire Mary Russell series again), Qui Zialong's latest, Wake by Lisa McMann, Susan Hill's books, Patricia Briggs' series, several by Juliet Marillier, the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (BRILLIANT), a couple by Michael Connelly, a couple by Donna Leon (I love her books and just salivate when she describes the foods and wines), several rereads by Mary Stewart (just finished This Rough Magic last week - it is set in Corfu, and one of the TAAFOMFT team members just went to Corfu so I just had to reread this book), and today I finished A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell. As you can see, I enjoy well-written mysteries and fantasies. I do occasionally read non-fiction but it's funny - I used to read lots of how to, self improvement, and biographies but now I would rather be entertained. I reread my Jane Austen's almost every year but I don't read much other "serious" literature. I have to admit I read so much of it when I was getting my degree (English literature with an emphasis on Victorian lit) that I rarely dip into it now except for Bleake House by Dickens which is one of my all time favorites.
So, as I asked, what are you reading? Got any suggestions?
I made the corner book marker (above photo) this afternoon for a Candy Shoppe Design blog challenge - super easy!
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention Scat by Carl Hiassen (it's a young adult book but just as funny as all of his adult books). He moved to Vero Beach (the town in which I live) several years ago from Miami. Stuart Woods also lives here, and his Orchid Beach series is written about this area.
Have a great day tomorrow and tune in Wednesday for the next These are a few of my favorite things challenge!!!!!!

Inspired by ..........

I received a free sample of the new Starbucks instant coffee in the mail and just had to create something with the packaging. I found this painted wood wall hanging for 50 cents at the thriftstore and the whole thing just made itself. the journaling reads - in case of caffeine emergency break seal

I did this layout last night for the free shoppin thread on SIStv. My items were lime green and pink paint. lace, and something vintage. I made the straw flower on the bloom loom that I just got - it's made of actual vintage raffia straw that I found at the Goodwill thrift store. I bought every skein that they had.

This layout is for Inspired by Amelie and is about simple pleasures that we love and that make life worth living. Here too I made a straw flower (better get used to seeing them). The vintage milk cap is the one I won from Julie (bmwgirl on SIS) and the valentine I won from another RAK. The ting bottle cap is from Trinidad and the photo is of the key lime tree in our yard (I have used a larger version of this photo as a model to paint and showed it in an earlier posting).

Today it is beautiful here and I am going out on the lanai to read - not only am I reading a great murder mystery (the various haunts of man by Susan Hill) but I also received a copy of the new Stampington magazine Marie (purchased on ebay) and I can hardly wait to read it.

Happy Saturday!

A favorite book

I made a layout celebrating one of my favorite books, the Moon-Spinners by Mary Stewart. I read this book as a teenager and it (and Mary Stewart's other books) set the standard by which I judge romantic suspense and mystery novels - unfortunately the vast majority don't measure up. This book and the other books that Mary Stewart wrote about Greece and its islands instilled in me a love of Greek culture - food, interior and exterior design, and mythology. I was reminded of this the past weekend when I got the dvd Mamma Mia from the library and even though I thought the movie was pretty awful, I adored Donna's house and especially her bedroom. I am seriously thinking of painting my bedroom blue - I already have sheer white curtains and a brass bed with lots of white linens. Last summer to make the bedroom look cooler (as we live in Florida) I put blue sheets on the bed and hung blue quilts on the walls. It definitely helps mind-wise but the blue walls in the movie set bedroom were so inviting - maybe....

I am continuing to use up my supplies on hand but I really lucked out - in Jan I won the Inspired by Amelie challenge and received a great kit from Create my keepsake, items of which I used on this layout. I even cut out pieces from the BG urban prairie stuff in the kit and used that. I also did a first in this layout - I actually painted on some Heidi Swapp patterned paper. Woohoo! The art journaling class is really freeing me and I am trying new things every day.

Art Journaling 102

I am so loving my Art Journaling 102 class with Dina Wakely. I really should have taken 101 but unfortunately we have only so much money for frivolous pursuits. Anyway, today our lesson was on motifs - picking a motif and using it in many different ways - we were to use paints (acrylic and all I have are cheap mm and Michaels so they are way too thin) and spray inks (all I have is glimmer mist and it doesn't work very well with gesso as you can see in the middle photo; the top photo is glimmer mist sans gesso and it worked so much better!) This is great fun and I have to admit I am tired after painting and stamping most of the day. I am full of ideas right now but I think I need some energy - a pot of tea is steeping as I write.

Yesterday I got several great books at the used book store including a 1920 copy of the Blue Book to London - you should see the incredible maps and floorplans - oh such love! I was devouring the floorplans of the British Museum - how many books have I read where the characters go there. I also went to the library and on display were 2 young adult books that I checked out - the Tree Shepherd's Daughter and Into the Wildewood. I've already read the first one - a fun easy fantasy set in a permanent Renaissance festival site. What's really weird is that I recognized the site as one that we used to go to in Colorado; however, the author relocated it to Fort Collins and that bothered me a little as FC is not exactly in the foothills. Oh well, I just pictured it as I knew it (actually the site is Larkspur, between Denver and Colorado Springs) and it brought back memories of Brian who always insisted on wearing a brown hooded cape (he was a thief in D&D gaming) and who always had to eat one of the huge turkey drumsticks. Such fun!

Mailbox surprise

This morning I went to a local quilt show with some friends - I always like to see what people are making, and check out the vendors. The show was smaller than usual (not good) but there were a lot of people attending (good). I saw a few quilts that I loved and some others that I could appreciate the work spent on them and some others that, well, best nothing said. I bought one fat quarter - I coveted the Amy Butler fabrics but at $10/yard, they were out of my league. Just as I got home, the mailman had stopped in front of our house - he had a priority mail package for me. Do I love getting packages?!? the answer is obviously yes!!

Some time back - the beginning of January - I won a challenge on the Inspired by Amelie blog and was told I would receive something. Nothing happened so I emailed them. They said they would look into it. Nothing happened. So on Wednesday this week I emailed the company that had been advertised as sponsoring the challenge and asked them very politely about it. Within a short time, I received an email from them, and then another, and then another. They contacted the Amelie people, apologized to me saying they had never gotten the info (obviously just an email problem), and mailed me the prize plus some extras that afternoon. Today I received the package(see photo) and it was awesome - very different things than I would have purchased but that's good as it will force me to work outside my comfort zone - and the really weird thing is that the fat quarter I purchased (in the second photo) looks like it belongs with the kit. Go figure. The company is Createmykeepsake and I am super impressed by their response. I am super excited by what I received and my little pink cells are bubbling with ideas.

Last night I read a really funky book that was recommended by Amy Karol of angrychicken blog fame - the Willoughbys by Lois Lowry. It's a young adult book but very sarcastic and funny - a quick and enjoyable read. I have been reading a series of Australian murder mysteries set in the 1920s by Kerry Greenwood. They were recommended to me at the bookstore so I got one at the library and liked it. I then checked the website to get the correct order and got the first one on cd at the library. I listened to it while I was working on a quilting project - a big batik tote bag. I will be starting on the second in the series tonight. They are quick and easy reads but very humorous.

Mistress Mary, quite contrary

I missed blogging yesterday as I was sooooo busy but maybe I'll do two today. Yesterday morning I made a layout for the Stash Diet challenge on SIS - to use what you had on hand and to use a nursery rhyme. I knew immediately the rhyme: Mistress Mary quite contrary as that was my favorite nursery rhyme. My first name is Mary (although I go by my middle name) and I used to think the poem was about me. I had an old kodachrome photo (isn't it awful the way kodachrome photos are deteriorating) of me at age 2 and once I got it out, the color yellow was what I wanted for the background. The shade of yellow was very hard to select as the photo almost has a greenish cast and I only have a few pieces of yellow cardstock (which I got in a Bazzill kit on QVC a long time ago). I'm not fond of yellow so I rarely buy yellow things or supplies. Then I wanted to do a flower from the tutorial on http://iluv2scrapmilestones.blogspot.com/. On Tuesday I had gone to the library and at the front of our library there is a big table where people leave magazines to give away - I had picked up the December issue of W and it was full of ads. I found an ad for a perfume that was in pink so I used the page to cut out the flower and then I knew that I would use pink for the accents. I also found an ad for Dilliards for perfumes and one of them was for Harajuku perfume and had photos of all of the little doll bottles. I cut them out for the "pretty maids". I painted the edges of the paper with paint and used lots of Heidi Swapp tapes. I have old supplies I got when I first started scrapping that I rarely use so I am determined to find new ways to use them this year. the whole layout came together in a couple of hours and I posted it to SIS in the late afternoon.

I also finished cutting out the 1 1/4 inch pieces for my yellow (obviously I am in a yellow mood right now) quilt and while doing that listened to some of 1776 by David McCullogh on CD. I am learning so much more than I ever knew about the American Revolution. I will look at the bookstore for some books about John and Abigail Adams, and their relationship.

I am also reading one of the books on my booklist for the year: Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman. She is a writer of children's books who gets divorced 16-18 years ago and never again has a permanent residence. It's a very liberating book and even though I loved being in so many countries when we lived and cruised on our sailboat, I now like the stability of being in our home. Just last night at dinner, Dan and I were talking about how happy we are to live in a paid off house - it's like our little cave or lair where we can hide away and escape the economic turmoil. Sure, its "value" has dropped but it is still our home and since we don't plan to move any time soon, we feel good about it.

Scrapping across the universe - I won!!!!!!

I was so so excited to look at the Scrapping across the universe blog yesterday and discover that I had won the last challenge. I don't know exactly what tangible thing I won but it's the thrill that they liked my layout so much. I will be a guest designer this month so I've got to get busy this week and do a really cool layout.

I worked at the bookstore this morning and found a treasure - 2 volumes of The wonderful world of Walt Disney from 1964 (I have since checked online and there were at least 8 volumes and they came in sets with cardboard boxes.) - Fantasyland and Stories from other lands. They have art from the cartoon movies and photos from the other movies and programs. I can hardly wait to look through them. They were in "used" condition so they were quite inexpensive. I can see some vintage Disney elements creeping into my layouts!