Oh My Heck!

Usually my days are comprised of minutes that move slower than turtles, but this week things are going fast at a dizzying speed! It couldn't be the 9 tax returns I have left to do with a deadline of Monday, could it? rofl

Anyway, when things get this busy, there's always something I forget. Like in yesterday's post, I forgot to include some information that was very very important to me to post. Of course, I forgot to, right?

Instant Replay?
I am re-displaying this card from yesterday, because I used a Maria Bell sketch as my inspiration, and I totally forgot to cite that. Many apologies, Maria. I happen to have a saved image file of the sketch, which I've shown right next to my card. I had planned to get busy during October using her sketches to make what I'm calling Maria Cards, but her dang sketch site is temporarily down and it's killing me! Just goes to show you never appreciate things til they are deprived from you, right? LOL Really, I always appreciated her sketches, I just never got my act together to make some cards before now. Ten months, that's all it took. Sheesh! Hurry up and get that domain name, Maria, ppplllleeeeezzzzeeee!!!!!!! winkwink


Daily Card Trick
Excuse me for being old-fashioned, but this card makes me giddy! LOL I love to look at it and am going to rue the day I part with it. Love that music stamp I used on the tag, the image of the woman, the quote, the colors, and I currently have a love affair going on with Colorbox fluid chalk ink cat eyes (which I've had for a couple of years, sheesh again). I had always worried about the ink transferring or rubbing off, but I find that if I let it dry long enough, then take a tissue and gently rub it or lightly burnish the ink, it takes care of that pretty well. Tell me, what do you think about my card today? Hope you like this vintage style, cuz I'll be making loads of them, hehe. You were just warned.....

I am Stuck on Rutless, Cuz Ruts Don't Stick On Me
Today's 2peas blogger challenge asks: Are you a person who will go out of your norm to try something new at least once. Or stay with that your comfortable with?

Oh boy, I think I'm allergic to staying the same for too long, in certain areas. Now, my clothes and my furnishings? They could stay the same for a decade, rofl, and some parts of them have. That's "classic" ya know, winkwink. But my hair, my organization, my decorations and arrangements, my art...all fair game to moving around. Even my blogs, you know that! So yeah, I try new stuff. A lot. All in all though, I'd say I'm about half and half. Some things will never change in my world, by choice. Face it, I'm just weird. And I love it.

In China but Close to Home
I hope this doesn't tear me up talking about it, but I was watching ABC Evening news like usual the other day, and on came a story about a special needs kid who is competing in the Special Olympic World Games this week in China. He's from Richland Hills, Texas and his name is Houstin Gardiner and I'll never forget him. They focussed on him, his history, his bravery, his story. He earned a gold and a silver, and when you watch him on the bars you think he's at the real show, he's that good. Interesting guy, really sad history, he's special needs because of shaken baby syndrome, biological parents were likely drug addicts. He was adopted, though, by great people and he's blossomed beautifully, just needs a bit more time than the average person.

I teared up something awful, worse than watching one of those old AT&T commercial, lemmetellya. Well, I had to google him to spell his name right, and you are never gonna believe what I discovered? 8 other kids in the American delegation to those games ARE FROM THE TOWN I LIVE IN. It floored me. Plus, I freakin recognized 2 of them from their pics. They live in a half-way house / assisted living group home around the corner from me! Boy, I was bawling then. I have a soft spot in my heart for kids who have special needs. It's an automatic trigger on my Mama Bear hormones, what can I say? I'd never be able to work or volunteer around them, though. I tried once and could not keep my emotions in check. Anyway, please join me in wishing these kids ALL the BEST and may every kid win a medal! (I went by the house those two live at and asked just to make sure. It's them all right. They are supposed to call me when they get home. They like ice cream and I'm gonna take them out for a scoop at MacDonald's.) Oh GAWD, where are those Kleenex.......

Catchya later, Ladies! Have your best Thursday ever!

Thanks for the Memories

I just had to copy and paste this post I made over at 2peas this morning. I went down Memory Lane (child of the 50's and 60's) for a pea who was doing a book of me about her own childhood and I ended bookmarking that thread because so many peas my age replied and here I was thinking I was the oldest living pea, LOLOL.
Here's what I posted:
"I'm a 1956 baby. I remember most of what everyone has already posted and I only had time to skim, but off the top of my head, memories of my childhood years (and apologies if it's already been listed):

*Captain Kangaroo every morning

*Malto Meal for breakfast

*My dolls were Chatty Cathy and Tiny Tears

*Jewelry boxes with the ballerina who twirled to music when you opened it

*Saving your money in first a real china piggy bank you had to smash to get the money out of, and later a Thing battery-operated bank (from the Addamms Family tv show) - it would grab the coin from you.

*Bolting out the door in the morning and not returning home until you were hungry or it was dark-thirty.

*Schwinn bicycles, often with a wire basket, horn, mirror and back fender you could haul your friend around on

*going to private kindergarten because there was no public

*huge big-sister-type crushes at one time or another on Annette Funicello, Patty Duke, Hayley Mills...and just aching to be Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas) when I grew up!


*Playing Chinese jump rope in the 4th grade before school, or jacks (huge!), marbles, checkers, hula hoops, metal skates you strapped on with a key - you lost that key, you were dead

*having to talk on the hall telephone and only for a few minutes (party line and only one phone in the whole house - finally got my own phone extension for 8th grade)

*Keds and PF flyer tennis shoes and that was it, and the ankle socks with the big-ass furry balls on the heel

*mercurachrome on scrapes and cuts .. finally they came out with Bactine spray

*getting whipped or popped or spanked for any little thing

*Go go boots, Bobby helmets, mini-skirts, fishnet hose, Mary Quant, Bonnie Bell make-up, beauty shop perms that made your scalp sting for days and stank too

*shaving your legs for the first time with your dad's double edged razor (there was nothing else), and of course cutting yourself good (I stupidly wiped the blade off with my thumb, ouch)

*I was in 2nd grade when JFK was assassinated; my dad came to get me at school. Everyone and everthing was just at a stop and in shock.

*Exercising to Jack LaLanne on tv at 6:30 every morning


*Charter member of the original Mickey Mouse Club

*Charter member of the Beatles fan club

*Only diet drinks were Tab and Fresca


*American Bandstand on TV

*camping out at the 7-11 to buy Tiger Beat and Teen magazines every month

*The year that Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Time Tunnel were both on tv at the same time - so unfair (no VCR's)

*Straightening my hair by wrapping it it around my head or rolling on orange juice concentrate cans.

*Drying my hair under a beauty shop type dryer (no handhelds yet)

*Wearing hose with garter belts until sometime in junior high (pre-pantyhose)

*No pants allowed at school until I was a high school sophomore. "

Okay, I wanna go lve back then. Waaaa! It really was fun! And since the speas blogger challenge for today was do I subscribe to any kits?... And no I don't... then this "challenge" was so much more fun.

Thanks for all the advice
from yesterday's post. Reading all your comments and emails made me really think about it. I hadn't even considered that Diego might wig out and be violent. I plan to call Missy tonight and discuss the possibility, to develop a game plan, just in case.

Daily Card Trick
I picked this notecard to show cuz it kind of fits in with my girlhood memories. I used one of my Fiskars border punches (eeks, I have 6 of them, guess I went kinda overboard on those, but I'm going to use every one of them now cuz I had fun). I don't know if you can see, but I made the punch wave be parallel to the wave of text - cool, huh? I've started combining my artist trading card stash with my scrapbooking stash and coming up with these artsy kind of cards. And me likey, how about you? Since I just had to buy the entire Melissa Francis line of vintage diecut signs, I will probably be making these til Hell freezes over and they will call me the card lady because I'll be giving everyone I meet a card just to get rid of them all, LOLOLOL. Eeeewwww, hope that was a joke, eh?

Speaking of Punches
Yesterday for about an hour, I thought I was in the Twilight Zone. I keep my punches in one of those hanging clear vinyl pocket shoe keepers, and I was looking for my scalloped square punch -- a big honkin punch, highly visible -- but I was coming up short, no clues either. I went through the entire house, nothing. This went on for about 20-30 minutes, until it occurred to me that I'd just assumed what it looked like and I might be wrong. I was envisioning it as a Marvy Uchida punch. 5 minutes later I see it on a table in my craft room. It's a McGill punch, so my brain never registered it as the missing punch.

Scarey when it happens to ya. Plus, tonight, I called my doctor's lab results line for my blood test results and their instructions, and I entered the wrong number for my own SSN. That's a first, literally. Being an accountant, I am a numbers person and remember all of them. I suppose it might be all downhill from here and just a matter of time now before I lose it (what I feel like anyway).

Well, this lil dab'll do ya surely til tomrrow, LOL yathink? Have a great Hump Day!!!

How Would You Feel?

Seriously, I would like to hear your answers. Here's the deal: I was talking on the phone to my Missy girl Monday, chatting away about this and that. Suddenly, her voice lowered and she became serious.

"Mom." You know the tone, like let me get your attention, please. "I have something I want to tell you but I don't want to upset you."

Oh dear, now how does a Mom not succumb to a good pre-freak-out upon hearing those words? Still, I just couldn't see anything being all that bad, as I've been managing to stay intimately informed of her world, comparatively. So, I drew a deep breath and replied, "Okaaaay. Shoot."

Well, she proceeded to describe how the ex-boyfriend Diego destroyed -- tore up -- all the layouts I'd created for him. For weeks now, he's been acting like a lost soul, in control one minute and wildly nuts the next. He's left numerous nasty / goofy comments on Missy's MySpace; it often seems to Missy that he stalks her at meal times in the cafeteria or en route to class while acting like it's random chance; and a mutual friend of theirs from high school calls and extends way too many invites to come visit their dorm room to hang out (like the old days), promising Diego will not be there yet there he is every time Missy has accepted as if the friend is being used to force a meeting, thereby making it really difficult to continue to be friends all the way around.

Nothing he's done has deterred Missy from her desire to remain broken up and in fact his actions confirm to her her decision was the correct one. So, I guess him destroying the layouts was a lash-out in frustration or something. Seems a little too overboard to me, though, since the ones he has up at school do not have Missy in them at all.

At first, my response was to just shrug my shoulders and say, well it figures. As if, I don't care. But as yesterday wore on, I did care. A Lot. And I did not feel a stitch of anger, but just a spreading sadness.

Missy continued, "I feel bad cuz I know that although you support my decisions 100%, you were sad we broke up cuz you were really fond of him."

So true, so true.

Which is why, I suppose, I am feeling sadness about what he did.

Not only did he tear them up, he threw them on his floor and left them there. She saw them and confronted him about it. He said he couldn't stand to look at them. She said, you could have given them back to my Mom. She would have liked to have layouts of you in her scrapbook. She's still very fond of you and was sad we broke up.

She said he didn't even seem to care. Well, geez, I know that says more about him and how he handles stuff than it does about whether he wants to hurt me or not, so I don't believe he wanted to hurt me. It just saddens me that my creations can lead such a precarious life once they leave me. Or be thought of as just so much paper.

Ever had anything similar happen to you? Just curious. Because now I'm not that willing to scrap for the new boyfriend, even though Missy has already asked me. Or for her roomie, even though she's asked me. Makes me really wish I knew how to do digital scrapbooking and enjoyed it. It suddenly made me realize that you never really give those away. You just give away copies.

I guess I need to sit down and discuss with Missy, and see if digital will do for those two friends. Wow, never thought this kind of thing would be my motivation to actually cross the scrap platform. Just goes to show we never know, from day to day, do we?

Okay, Channel Change! lol

Daily Card Trick
I said I was gonna drag them out, one a day, so here we go. Birthday card for one of my nephews who turns 11 today. Happy Birthday, Teddy!
I must be getting hard-core in my use of scraps, because I didn't even try to mesh old with new on this card, even in the midst of my boy-card phobia. My approach was remarkably hard-ass. Like, I didn't even put real buttons over the fake ones like I usually do. To be fair, though, that's a kind of girly treatment, anyway. I chose the postage stamp deco scissors to trim the edges of these 3 year old die cut card elements, and cobalt blue ink for the edges. Also a couple of Dymo tape words to fill in for words I didn't have die cuts for. Yup, the creating went fast too.

I need to whack out about 30 dozen of these kind of cards and make some kind of material dent in my scraps and stash. Sure. On my To-Do voodoo, fo sho.

Well, the need to take the trash cans to the curb is calling my name, so I'll close this for today and play Beat the Garbage Truck, hehe. Hubs conveniently forgot it was trash day, I guess. That's okay, I'm the Crack-Filler-Inner, doncha know. Have a great Tuesday, everybody!