random.on purpose.

I Am Grateful

• for a husband that loves me, and whom I'm still giddy about eighteen years after our first meeting, and after sixteen years of marriage
• for my first marriage - it provided me with contrast, insight, memories, and six beautiful children
• for parents who were brilliant together - until the day his Alzheimer's completely erased his memory of even being married, my father got all misty-eyed when he talked about my mother.  Theirs was a fairy-tale kind of love...
• for my childhood - idyllic, secure, creative, open-ended.  My parents encouraged us to be who we really were and pursue every avenue of learning that interested us, and guided without making us feel "less" because we had missed the mark or done something not in line with what they'd taught us.  Self esteem and creativity were huge in the home I grew up in.
• for my children.  They are constantly teaching me and making me re-think what I think I know.  They are all amazing individuals - so similar and so vastly different from each other - and I feel truly blessed to know them.
• for my grandchildren.  Ditto on what I said about their parents...
• for my siblings and their significant others and their offspring - what a varied and wonderful group of interesting, heart-warming folk my family is!
• for my friends.  I tend to keep myself to myself and, as a result, I have more acquaintances than actual friends, but the handful that I have are a HUGE blessing to me!
• for clothes to wear and food to eat and a roof over my head and a car to drive and a million, billion creature comforts that I enjoy and usually take for granted
• for technology that allows me to learn things that were previously unavailable to me.  There is simply not enough time to go to all the classes I would need to attend or read all the books I would need to read to answer the questions that pique my interest from time to time.  I can look it up somewhere on the Internet and move on...
• for the same technology that allows me to do what I'm doing right now  - share ideas with others that I may or may not ever meet.  The blogs I go to daily and the emails and the Facebook (which I'm not on yet - maybe soon) and all are incredible tools to connect us with each other, and my life is enriched because of it.
• for Odd Brain.  I enjoy the twists and turns and oddities, and am grateful again for parents who allowed me that freedom and didn't try to discourage my oddness or get me to 'conform'.  One result is that I will try pretty much anything that interests me without fear - I'll either succeed brilliantly, learn what to do different the next time, or realize that perhaps my interests will be better served elsewhere.  Each result is equally valid, so what's to fear?  Thanks, AJ and JG...

There is more - so much more - but you get the idea...  Have a very blessed and peaceful and happy Thanksgiving.  I'm grateful for you, too!

The Joys of Home Ownership

...are mixed, to be sure!  We're still working and working and working...  This weekend work continues on the bathroom and the guest room/office.  Question:  Was this color ever in style?

If your answer was, "yes, in the '70s", I have to say no, this is not Harvest Gold, and I was there (in the '70s), and never saw a color anything like this!  The glue from the wallpaper certainly doesn't help matters at all, but come on - eww!  A petite pink country-style wallpaper was applied over it, and I spent the entire afternoon removing remnants of it while Greg finished drywall and pulled what should have been caulk, but was actually silicone, in the bathroom.

I'm not typically a swearing girl, but I was certainly tempted many times.  Greg, too...  Here's a sampling of this afternoon's conversation:

Greg (pulling rubber base away from the wall):  "They used silicone to put the base on.  Haven't they heard of glue?"

Me (attempting to remove paper in pieces larger than 1/2 inch at a time):  "Maybe they used it all on the wallpaper..."

 A little later:  Me (getting aggravated that the paper is getting burnished to the wall instead of scraping off of it):  "What the holy hell (okay, maybe a little swearing) did they stick this up with?"

Greg: "Maybe silicone..." 

*Sigh*  I managed to get three of the four walls done, and most of the fourth wall will be hidden behind the new wall, so maybe I can get it done in one day when I get ready to torture myself some more.  I failed to wear gloves (my bad), and now they are very red and raw and blistered from the hot water, the Dif (totally useless), and the vinegar (Home Depot associate's advice - cheap and effective, for the most part)

We went and selected a vanity and granite countertop/sink and flooring, but we're in a stall with the faucet (he wants brushed nickel, I'm holding out for bronze).  At least he likes my color ideas and the flooring I found.  We agreed on the vanity because we each chose the same one independent of the other - happy days!

Anyway - that's why nothing new on the crafty front!  Too bad, too, because I have more new toys...  I had to buy a new heat gun because where it looks like my current one is pointing and where the embossing powder is actually melting don't line up - a little aggravating, and potentially dangerous, to boot! New stamps, new papers (yeah - I really needed more of both of those...) 

Ah well, tomorrow's another day - and that's when I'll be back!  G'night!

Faith, Fear, and Friday the 13th

Thank goodness it's Friday!  Well...maybe not if you're superstitious - it's Friday the 13th!  Did you know that there were three of those this year, (February, March, November), and that this only occurs every 11 years?  Or that any month that begins on a Sunday will have a Friday the 13th, and that there is at least one of those every calendar year?  I did a search to see what's what about this superstitious day...

Other tidbits: 13 witches in a coven, 13 knots in a hangman's noose, and the back of the dollar bill is loaded with thirteens: 13 steps on the pyramid, 13 stars above the eagle's head, 13 arrows in his claws, and 13 leaves on the olive branch.  Fear of the number 13 is called triskaidekaphobia, and folks afflicted with this malady include Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and Napoleon.

There are a couple of ideas about the origin of the superstitions, one involving Scandinavian folklore and paganism, the other involving the Knights Templar - read more HERE or HERE or do your own search, if you need more background or fun facts or whatever... 

Whenever I'm confronted with a superstition of any kind, I always sort of shake my head in wonder.  What is it in the psyche that trips so many people up on things like this?  Here's my view of the broader picture (understand that this is MY view, and not necessarily anyone else's):

Faith and fear are opposite ends of the same spectrum - faith at one extreme end, fear at the other.  Faith is stronger and more powerful, but doesn't get nearly the attention.  Why?  Because fear is more sensational!  To illustrate:  Is there really more bad news than good news on any given day?  Probably not, but the good news is only interesting to those in the immediate vicinity of where it happened or who it happened to, while everybody wants to know about the bad stuff - the dirty laundry, the scandal, the crime, the natural disaster.

Over the years/decades/centuries, there have been various minority groups in various areas of the world who have been given a bad name or labeled a certain way.  Did the bad name or label apply to everyone in the group?  Probably not, but a vocal few troublemakers became the focus, and the focus broadened to include the entire group.

It seems to be human nature to have a morbid curiosity about negative, "scary" things, and - because we aren't sure what to do about them or even if we can do anything - we give away our power to the fear.  Since what we focus on expands, the world becomes a scarier place, and we feel less secure in it. 

In my humble opinion, if we really took a collective step back and realized the good in the world, and focused on that, we would have much less to fear and would ultimately be much happier!  Additionally, it's been my experience that when you "face the lion in your path" (i.e., the thing you fear), it vanishes/resolves with minimum effort and/or resistance.

And that's the end of my little stump speech for the day, I'm going to get off my soapbox now and sit behind my sewing machine - 'cuz that's what I do!  Have a FABULOUS Friday the 13th!  Go walk under a ladder or two, step on a couple of cracks, and grab that black cat in a big hug when he dashes across your path! 

Well, Looky What We Got Here...

Ah yes - a distinct Absence of The Wall!  We have no lights in the bathroom until Greg gets The New Wall built (it's semi-framed, but no sheetrock yet), so the room I'm sitting in to type this gets to share its pathetisad little lamp (sans shade) with the loo.  I have this, though:

Switches for: ceiling light, fan, can lights (which will be above the vanity), and GFI outlet - DEFINITELY an improvement over the old schtuff!  We're getting the vanity this week and finishing the installation next weekend, after which I will texture and re-paint the walls. 

Further progress occurred up the stairs:

Freshly painted walls and trim in MY room!  I'm already soooo loving it!  The walls are Behr Hopsack.  It's sort of a Sahara Sand/kraft sort of color (slightly darker), and the trim is Benjamin Moore Atrium White.  Now I just have to get functional furniture that isn't hideous to put in here - oh, and scrape the excess paint off the window glass...

Since I was painting walls and have all the "stuff" in this room piled on the worktable (you can see it reflected in the window), creating anything else was nigh on to impossible, so I didn't do it!

Three tidbits to share:  Tina's comment about the flavored creamer got me curious, so I read the label of the International Delights Caramel Macchiato creamer, and it confirmed what I already suspected - it's not really "food", so those with food allergies (gluten, lactose, etc.) are  probably able to use it safely.  It's like liquid Cool Whip - it tastes like creamy goodness, but it is a list of chemicals in reality...

Also, I was mulling over the whole painting thing and have this to say:  stick with what you know!  I've been painting - successfully and even professionally - for over a decade, and have NEVER run into the issues I had in that ridiculous bathroom!  I should've stayed with the Behr paint that I know and love, or the Benjamin Moore that I've had good results with instead of listening to the guy about the "new and wonderful" paint-and-primer-in-one that he was pushing...

Lastly, I had a weird dream last night that featured a group of really young boys doing some kind of hip-hop/break dance routine, and they were really, really bad at it - especially when they tried to do flips and all.  In my dream and upon wakening, all I could think was that I could tell they weren't really committed to the flip - they sort of wimped out and did it half-heartedly, so they ended up doing more of a tumble than anything else.  I thought, "They could probably do it if they didn't psyche themselves out before they started, and really committed to doing it."  Metaphor for my life (and/or yours)?  Hmmm...I'm thinkin' yes, maybe...

Alrighty, then - that's the news from here!  Business as usual tomorrow, and - of course - I'm swamped work-wise, but I'm going to DO something that I WANT to do, TOO!!!  You, too?  Hooray!  Have a great week, and thanks for stopping by!

Derailed

Super-quick post because I totally blew off work all morning to make a card:

It's for a little boy whose family is celebrating Christmas this week instead of waiting until December, because little Noah will probably have passed by then...  I read about it this morning when I checked the Limited Supply challenge on Splitcoast for today.  You can read the challenge and find a link to the story HERE.  Needless to say, this project pre-empted the one I previewed yesterday...

Here's a view of the card when it's opened:

I got to use four of my Whippersnappers (aren't they sweet?), and just plain ol' random-stamped snowflakes on plain ol' white cardstock (the snowflake stamp is from Stampin'Up!'s "Flakey Friends" set).  I computer-generated the "We wish you a" part of the sentiment (Comic Sans font), and the rest is an Inkadinkado stamp.  Pretty much all there is to tell on this.  Oh, wait - I need to tell you this, too:  I used a light box to see through the cutout images so I could color the backs and add a few detail lines (not as detailed as the fronts, though), so it would look decent on both sides...

Okay, I really do have to get to work now...  Have a great day, send Noah a card if you can, and thanks for stopping by!
  
 

Under Construction

Welcome to NOVEMBER!  Unbelievable that the year is so close to being over...  Did you know that November is National Blogging Month?  Yeah, me neither - I just read about it on my niece's blog - she had a link to a website for it and everything.  Obviously, I'm not motivated enough to add it here for you - it's NaBloMo or something like that if you want to Google it.  (Fascinating that "Google" is now a verb, eh?)

Anyway, I've been absent for a bit, and thought I'd better post something!  Today I just have some random Same Subject musings, and just general tidbits, I guess...  An alternate title for this post would be "I Really Should Be Working", but I've hit total burnout on my "job" and can't seem to motivate or care about doing it (the downside of working for yourself - no one looking over your shoulder to see if you're actually working...or is that an upside...?)  I started dismantling a cushion cover to use as a pattern for the new ones, and that's as far as I got.

Have you seen the "Makeover Realities" show where people are remodeling their house and things go horribly wrong?  We're living that on a not-quite-horrible scale over here...  I've been completely offline for three days because the room where the computer lives looks like this right now:

That is the backside of the bathroom wall (note the medicine cabinet in its stark whiteness).  We're building a new wall in this room - technically a bedroom - it will be our office/guest room when we're done.  The bathroom is claustrophobically small (I have to stand in the hallway to dry my hair because there's no room in the bathroom for me to bend over to flip my hair down to dry it, for example), so we planned to bump one wall back 18" into the adjoining bedroom, and I had a painting fiasco, which bumped the priority for this project to VERY VERY HIGH!  

Here's the scoop:  We were having guests for dinner last Saturday evening, and I thought it would be a good idea to paint the bathroom so it would be all pretty instead of all patchy from installing a new toilet and patching holes in the wall.  I went off to Home Depot to get paint and chose what I thought would be a deep sage green to match the shower curtain (poppies and leaves), and got the new paint-and-primer-in-one on the recommendation of the paint counter guy.  DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS AT HOME!  The paint literally slid off the wall, didn't cover well AT ALL, and was a horrible smashed-peas-baby-food green.  I told Sherry about it and she said "It can't be as bad as you say", so I sent her pics, to which she responded, "Oh, dear God!  Ok, ok - you win!"  Here is the evidence:

That second picture is after Greg tried to cover the horribleness with sheetrock mud - it just pulled more paint off the wall - perfect!  Yeah - on to Plan B, which is to texture the walls with new plaster, then paint a considerably more neutral color.  We decided that now would be a good time to bump the wall back, so we didn't have to texture the old wall, then do it again with the new one later on.  Since demolition makes considerable amounts of dust and mess, I moved the computer out of harm's way into our bedroom until the dust settled - literally!

Here's where the Same Subject theme comes in...  I've known for quite some time that I need to make a career change and I see warning signs of moving back into depression because I haven't done it yet (refer to the burnout comment earlier).  As I was going about the busy-ness (not to be confused with business, which is a whole different thing) of this morning, I kept seeing that partially framed wall and thought it a fitting metaphor for my life - it's Under Construction.  Just as this house will always have something else requiring time and attention and re-working, so will I.  Every time I think I'm at an Ending Point, I will realize that it's just the Beginning of the next thing.  That concept is even in a song: "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end..." (Closing Time, Semisonic)

Another tidbit on the Domino Effect:  I've been working in really poor lighting because a ceiling fan and its little bulbs don't really throw enough light across a wide enough area to do the job very well.  It's fine for ambience, but not for sewing and stamping and all.  I bought a couple of flourescent lights (yes, the ugly shop kind) to install so I could see what I was doing (not to worry - I do have a plan for camouflaging them into something pretty), but thought that I should paint the ceiling before I did that.  Then I realized that when I cut in the ceiling I would most likely get paint on the un-stripped wallpaper, thereby gluing it permanently to the wall.  Yup - I spent eight hours Saturday stripping the rest of the wallpaper, and two hours Sunday morning scrubbing off the glue residue.  The good news:  now I can start making that room pretty instead of just workable!

Just for fun, I'm sharing a couple of Halloween tidbits, too.  I was really short on time, but wanted to do something for the folks I work with/for, so I made witch hat treats that I saw somewhere out there on the Internet:

Bad pic, I know, but that's the best I could do before I had to run...  This is all you need to make them:

You just squeeze a little blob of icing onto the center of the cookie, then smoosh an unwrapped Hershey kiss into the icing.  The hardest part is unwrapping all of the kisses!  One package of cookies makes 40 hats, and I had kisses and icing left over...  I took them to the office of the parent company, Decor, and also to The Fabric Mill, where the girls were all dressed up for the occasion:

They were havin' a yabba-dabba-doo time, I'm tellin' ya!  Jackie was Betty, Della was Barney, Kim was Wilma, Keli was The Grand Poobah, and Cindy was Pebbles (isn't she the cutest?)  Here's the shot before this shot:

That's Holly disguised as Dino sniffin' around in the foreground.  She lives at Della's house, along with three other rescued chihuahuas (Holly is a mix and I don't remember where she was rescued from, Josie and Lola were puppy mill mommies, and Alfie is a neglected pup rescue).  Della refers to them collectively as "the Mexicans", and is goofy about them - totally attached and smitten and all... 

Well, I guess I've wasted as much time as I can on this blogging project, so I'd better actually go cut out the cushion covers or paint the ceiling or something...  I'm going to try to post every day this month for NaBloMo!  We'll see how that goes...  'Bye for now, and thanks for stopping by!