Spring 2019 Update

Posting for the beginning of 2019 - - maybe some day I'll look back and remember these days with more fondness - right now they're fraught with stress ... and a little bit of relief through crafting.

First - Dan and I started taking Chantix on Jan 5 - and our Quit Date was Jan 12 -
and we haven't smoked since!  I've gained more weight than i want to own up to - my doctor is all "you lost is once you can do it again" and encouraging the quit over fretting the weight.  She did us both a solid, however, when she prescribed Nexium  We've slept better and been more comfortable the past few days that we have in the past 2 months!  the acid stomach and horrible gas from the Chantix were complicating the stress - and now that has resolved.  I highly recommend anyone on Chantix pick up Nexium and start taking them immediately - and plan to continue as long as you're taking Chantix.

My Father-In-Law passed at the beginning of February - We has his Internment Ceremony Saturday, followed by a 'reception' over at Evalyne's place.  She is proving a challenge.  Dan is there daily - every single day since the beginning of February.  We've had to take over her bills and checkbook - othewise she wouldn't have water or electricity - or insurance.  Dan stepped in and consolidated the paperwork he found stacked all over 3 rooms and put it all in totes and brought it to our place.  We spent 2 weeks sifting and sorting and reviewing and ripping - lots of ripping.  But we found out who all she pays, if not how much, and we found the life insurance policies, and homeowners insurance, and health insurance, and have done everything we can to get her essential records straightened out.  We got the Life Insurance claims filed, her bills caught up, and I've got access to her banking records electronically so i can pay her bills - on time. She handed it all over to us...she wants nothing to do with paying bills any more. Then we have to figure out how much trouble she's in financially - cuz we're thinking her outgo will exceed her income....and we gotta figure out how to manage that!

In between we went on a cruise - and decided we will NEVER cruise on MSC again.  It was horrible! I won't belabor it here - suffice to say they have no idea of customer service - and we have no idea how they're going to survive on the American Market that way!!!  We've got our 30th Anniversary Cruise scheduled already - went back to Royal Caribbean - we know them and enjoy them.  Maybe next after that will be Celebrity - since they're rating really well these days.

And still I've managed to find time at my beloved craft table.  I'm finding I really am enjoying creating Watercolor cards 'the Art Impressions way' ...and am exploring more and more the benefits of embossing with glittery embossing powder.  Below are pictures of some of my more recent creations in support of the 2 Swaps i still participate in.  Both are hosted at SplitCoast Stampers - one for RonaldMcDonald House and the other Cards for a Cause, which changes the charity supported every month.  These pictures are all posted in my gallery at SplitCoast Stampers: 

Flowers from Heartfelt Creations, sentiment from StampinUp	Multi-layered Stamp set from EBay wholesale provider, sentiment embossed in silver
Hand colored, stamp set from EBay wholesale provider	ArtImpressions window was 2018 Expo Exclusive, and the rest of the stamps used come from various sets.
Stamp set from EBay wholesale provider	Altenew Hyacinth Build-A-Flower set, with embossed highlights
Altenew Cherished Memories stamp, watercolored, and overlaid with clear embossing	So I seem to gravitate to the Beach scene - i live in Florida - Go Figure!
The palm trees are from a 2019 Art Impressions Release!	Palm trees here are 'vintage' Art Impressions, manufacturer of chair and umbrella unknown.

Additionally, I am still creating 'fun' stuff - mostly for mom right now.  This is a piece i made for my mom. Mamma's in late stages Alzheimers in a Memory Care facility, and it's very difficult to buy anything for her. Mamma kept Orchids for decades, moved with them from Maryland to Florida, through 3 retirement/assisted living facilities, and they finally died when her Alzheimers got so bad she forgot to, or overwatered them.

So for her 88th Birthday this year i gave her some orchids she couldn't kill - it's about 2Ft high by 18in wide.  All in metallic papers, which shimmer and look great, accented by Red jewels.  It started out on the wall above her bed - then moved to the bathroom door - and is now missing.  I'm planning my next creation for next month's visit.

She loved it, and was gazing and it and smiling at it through most of our visit...The Orchids are from a LiaGriffith pattern, and the Happy Birthday sentiment is my own creation...modeled after something i saw on Google.

Catching up - Showing Off Crafty Stuff!

soo... i've not posted in a while. Here's a quick update...


We lost dad last year - he finally gave up in May - Mother's Day in fact - 2017.  He took a lot of mamma with him, as she has deteriorated rapidly since.  I miss him terribly. Mamma's under my sister's care now.  She's in a full-time Alzheimers center, and is pretty much wheelchair bound, barely having enough strength in her legs to stand.  She took several falls in a cupla months, and i think there's some permanent damage we've not been told about.  She's lost weight - and although she remembered me when we went in May for Mother's Day - she didn't remember Dan.  This time, going for her Birthday, she remembered Dan and it took a bit till she remembered me. Both Trips were made bearing gifts, which is a challenge for someone who is in an institution...so I am putting things on the wall.


So ima going to show off some of the stuff I've done recently.  For Mother's Day I made for mamma a 12X12 paperscape under glass.... the Floral Heart Paper Sculpture pattern from Dreaming Tree.  All done in shinny and metallic papers, with my first attempt at vinyl overlaying the glass. .  It has pride of placement on the wall by the foot of her bed.


For her Birthday I decided on Orchids, as she had soooo loved her garden, and especially her orchids.  I made my own version of the Orchid Plant from Lia Griffith.  This is done in 70# Text weight metallics and stands a bit over 2ft tall.  This is attached to the wall above her bed.  She was thrilled, and sat gazing at it while we were talking....

I think for Christmas i'll do something for her window - maybe a set of "stained glass" nativity....

I'm still making cards for 2 charities a month - Ronald McDonald House and Cards for a Cause.  I've have even stepped up and been the Hostess twice for Cause for a Cause, Once for the Veterans Hospital in Miami, and the other for Martha's House in Okeechobee.

 In April this year I finally got to the Scrapbook Expo in Orlando.  I took a handful of classes, a couple each in Watercoloring with Stamps (Art Impressions) and coloring with Alcohol Markers.  And I took a couple of Heartfelt Creations classes, learning a bit more about building 3D Cards.  I thoroughly enjoyed all, but the watercoloring with stamps was the one that stuck the most, and I've been doing all kinds of cards using those techniques...
In fact - the Arbor card was selected and highlighted as one of the "Favorites of the Week" at SplitCoastStampers.com.


And kinda lastly on my tour of "cool stuff" I've kept busy with - I had created a special card for my HEA for our Anniversary.  Again using a pattern from DreamingTree, this time the King of the Castle Cascade Card, but in a color scheme liked better....that of white and champagne and gold, with touches of Red.


So keeping an eye on Mom - and working with crafty stuff is how i keep busy when not at my full time job...and it's keeping me all happy.  We're looking towards the future - I'm on the downhill slide towards retirement - and Dan's just a year away from cresting that peak himself.  We're talking a lot about what to do in retirement - and where to live...
I'm pretty convinced I'm going to find a way to continue with my crafty stuff - maybe teaching classes. My heart's desire would be to be picked up by Art Impressions, or Heartfelt Creations, or someone like that and be able to teach classes for them...but I'm nowhere near ready for that yet!  My artwork is passable...but I'm not ready for prime-time!

Here's a story of a labor of love and teamwork! 

With Christmas coming, we were having a crisis trying to figure out how to handle my ever expanding craft area and still put up the tree.  The inadequacy of my crafting area, sprawl, and unavoidable disarray when working became a discussion.  I've long dreamed of a 'real crafting table' instead of the 2 card tables and stacks of tubs and boxes and totes and containers underneath I work with now.  I mentioned to him that I knew that folks were building their own, having seen them on the internet before, so we decided to research Dr Google and found lots of ideas for a DIY Craft table.  

After discussing what i wanted/needed, Hubby decided he could build a customized version of the 'door on the bookcases' craft center.  The customization would be primarily because my craft table is going to be against a wall, and framed on one side by tall bookcases and a door on the other.  

We started with shopping the bookcases, settling on the stock 2X3 bookcases, and found a deal on the darker color - so got 3 of them - one for each side and one for the back.  They delivered, and although there were a couple of dents in the edges and corners, were easy enough to put together.  He disliked the lack of full backing boards, so went out and got a cheap piece of luane panel and stained to come really close to the color of the bookcase.   

Here's one of the side cases, and how he's got it backed. 

Here's a shot from the front showing the 2 side and 1 back bookcase (sorry for the color).    

Now that he could see what he was working with for a base, he went on the mission to find what he could work with to make the tabletop, and in fact had started working on it before I knew.  Dear hubby found white melanin covered plywood at the local big-box Men's Adult Toy Store - and used that as the base for the tabletop, instead of the solid core door that most of the DIY craft table instructions we found favored.   I got home late from work exhausted and frustrated, and there in the middle of the living room floor was the beginning of my white tabletop - which drew the first smile I'd had all day!  The tabletop was upside down, with the framing facing up and bookcases placed, and he was marking off where the bookcases sat for adding guides.  

Little did he know that after the bookcases had come in and been built up, I decided to not burden him with trying to build shelving for the top, and went on a shopping spree for shelves. I bought all 5 shelves in white figuring that even if i had a wood-grained tabletop the white shelves wouldn't be too bad as long as they all matched.  The shelves showed up a cupla days later and the boxes were pushed to the side until needed.  So now my purchase of the white shelves was especially perfect!! 

As he built up the top piece, with a small lift for tabletop heights, internal support and guides for placement, I expressed concern for the flexibility of that much unsupported tabletop/plywood, where there was the 36" across the front between bookshelves.  He'd built a top that was 6 running feet long by 37 inches deep - to which he now added a drop lip around the whole thing to stabilize, using some of the left over wood cut off the original sheet.  Now he wanted to finish the edge somehow, breaking up the white and bringing up the color of the bookcases.  He decided to router out around the edge and finish with end cap trim. So yesterday we hauled the top outside and he router-ed around the top edge, sanded around the bottom of the lip, and did some cutting on the trim to match up the edges.  He put a quick layer of stain on the trim, and i helped him bring it all back inside, managing to beat the rain by about 5 minutes.  

For the first time the top was on top of the shelves, instead of the other way around!  He'd been building the whole thing upside down up to this point.  And it looked great - if lacking the edge trim at this point!!! I laid down for a nap, and when I awoke, the shelves were all assembled and placed on top of the table! The edge trim was attached last night after the staining dried.  

We rearranged the shelves this morning, and started discussing options to back the shelves so nothing pushes through and falls through behind the bookcases! We decided to re-purpose the unused backer boards from the bookcases for the two 3X1 shelf units.  Hubby's going to spray paint the boards white, trim them slightly, and use them for the 3X1 shelf units.  They're currently being pressed flat under the unit with the 9 compartments.  And for the longer shelves, he's got some luane left from the piece bought to back the bookshelves, as soon as he determines if it will take the white paint. 

My mission now is to tear down my existing craft area so we can pull out the tables and tubs and totes and boxes and containers, so we can move my new craft table in to it's permanent home.  It's amazing how much consolidation I've been able to do already - and how I'm already back at one of the Big Box Crafter's Toy Stores looking for stuff for desktop organization!  

I showed hubby pictures this morning of those cute little ATG Stands that can be found in a few places online, and he's going to build one for me!  He agreed with me - there's no need to spend nearly $40 on something he can build with scrap lumber for a cupla hours worth of time.  We're also looking at options for my desk lamp, and how/where to mount it.  He wants the table in it's final resting place and somewhat setup before he makes a final decision. 

We're hoping to get the table moved into place no later than the end of Thanksgiving weekend... which will be just in time to start putting up the tree - since the tree has to go where it's at right now!! That way too, i can get a chance to play at my table and see if it needs lifted more - that's the only concern right now...and he's got a plan to lift if needed.  

I'll take more pictures once it's in place - even if it's not completely set up...

All told the spend has been about $160 (estimated high) - which is easily 1/4 of what it would have cost to buy a stock craft table - not counting extras.  The fact that this is customized the way I want it - and has been a collaborative effort between the two of us - my ideas his labor - makes it that much more precious to me.  

And I want to make it perfectly clear - I love my hubby!!!  

And I know He loves me!  And that's why this is a story of love. 

His tolerance of my mess, created while I'm in my 'crafting' world, headsets in my ears, audio-book playing and no real sense of what's going on around me,  has been noteworthy.  His eagerness to take on this project, solely for making me happier is why I always call him a Near-Saint.  

Yes - he's hoping it will lead to less sprawl and mess in an area just off the living room - but really - he's doing this to make one of my dreams come true.  

We've been together almost 30 years - 25 married - and I love him more today than I did the day we got married.  And whenever we take on a project - like building a crafting table - we work well together, our ideas compliment each others, we listen, we share, and each brings their A-Game to making the project a success, and share in the celebration at the end.  

I love my hubby! 

And I think the first thing I'm going to do when my new table is set up is make a card for him telling him just how much I appreciate my table - and love him!