Happy (Flying) Pig Day ...... and a Little More

Greetings to all my "Pig Ladies".  Happy Flying Pig Day!  I know I usually send out a little something to you all but time got away from me in February.  I have determined that I'm a "tidsoptimist".  What's that you say?  A tidsoptimist is someone who is always late with or to something because they believe they have more time than they do.  Yup, that would be me.

I'm  afraid my preparedness for this holiday was even worse than my usual unpreparedness for Christmas because again, we know when Christmas comes just as we know when March 1st comes but somehow I lose track of the days and suddenly it's upon me.  

Anyhoo, enough kvetching about that.  I did put together a few of these little pyramid pigs and sent some flying to Rachel in Delaware, and handed a few out.  I had plans for all of my friends scattered about the world, and you still may see something in the mail before the end of the month.  I'm going to give it my best.

But didn't they turn out cute?

I had these little white bags that they fit into perfectly and just added a little message on the front. They were filled with M&M's and marshmallows.  The marshmallows were store-bought mini's and it was a mistake to put them in because within a few hours of stuffing the pigs, they were stale.  Oh well.  Another lesson learned.

If you follow me, you'll know the story behind the flying pigs.  If you don't, I recommend you do a search of my blog for my flying pig posts and you will see why they are so near and dear to my heart.

Last night, Leap Night, I was able to give two of my pigs to my two good friends who joined me at the Annual Hunterdon County Soup Cook-Off.  This was the third time we had attended this event and we always enjoy it.  

I brought some little fish-shaped trays for us to use to collect our soup samples.  Three at a time proved to be manageable both handling wise and tasting wise.  They always give you a little program with the name of the restaurant at each station and the name of the soup they have made. 

Here, starting at the top and going clockwise, are Cream of Mushroom, Broccoli Cheddar, and Tomato and Spinach Bisque which were the first three I tasted.

The last three I tasted were, again from the top, Hot & Sour Asian Chicken, Carrot Ginger, and Beer Cheddar (not on the program - they were a last minute entry). 

The soup that I voted for was Parsnip White Bean & Roasted Garlic which turned out to be the crowd favorite for the night.   

I enjoyed almost all of the entries and it may look like a little taste, but after 15 "tastes" I was quite full.  

And speaking of full, my February was full of some other "sweet" treats........

One family of some of our students made this candy arrangement for the office staff.

I thought it was pretty AND pretty clever to make kabobs out of those candies.  We each had a few pieces and then sent the rest home with our principal for his family. (Have I ever mentioned that he is the father of 8!?)  

When Rachel came home for the baby shower, she brought the desserts for the shower as well as 2 black & white cookies for us to share.  (The desserts she brought were cannolis and chocolate dipped macaroons and they were delicious too!)

And one day, out of the blue, HWNSNBP brought home this cupcake and some chocolates from an event at work. .........

And from the grocery store, he picked up a the first bouquet of daffodils for the season which sadly didn't open, but it was sweet of him nonetheless.  

So, looking ahead for the month of March I have a lot planned and a lot up in the air.  I am going to try another photo challenge for the month, but I plan on posting once a week for that.  And since it's also National Craft Month, I would like to finish up some of my other craft projects that aren't card related.  I am going through my craft room and purging so it will be good to take care of some of the UFO's that I find.  I have my tangle calendar book to maintain and my "little journal" to fill.  

Yes, it will be a busy month, but a creatively busy month I hope.  

And just in case you would like to join along with the photo challenge, the prompts come from The Idea Room.

Baby Shower

On Valentine's Day we had a baby shower for my daughter-in-law.  It was a brunch held at her mother's house.  Her mom and sisters made a delicious variety of brunch foods, Rachel brought specialty desserts, and my role was to make the favors - definitely in my wheelhouse.  

Oh, and it also had a book theme.  So looking back on some of the things that I have done in the past, these little punched babies reading books was where I was headed again.  (Can you tell what she's having?)  

I did some searching and found a pattern for a little box that looked like a book here.  Luckily I had a bunch of this scrapbook paper that was perfect.  

Here is the book closed.

And then opened.  I added a two-page spread inside the cover that had a pictures of Michelle and Chris as babies on each side along with their birth dates and labeled "My Mom" and "My Dad" and then across the bottom of the two pages "Thank you for coming."

The box opens and inside 6 Hershey's nuggets fit perfectly.

  

I used the babies on magnetic bookmarks that I made from matching blue and green card stock and repurposed magnets.  I tied a thin grosgrain ribbon around each book box first and then slipped the magnetic bookmark over the ribbon.  Everyone seemed pleased with them.  

The food was delicious, and she was so overwhelmed by all the wonderful gifts that she received. Her mom made her a beautiful quilt (not the one in the picture), my mother had knitted them a baby afghan, and one of Michelle's friends crocheted a beautiful afghan with a sailboat motif.  They have a nautical theme in the baby's room.  This is the card that I made for them which I cased from here. 

She's feeling and looking great and has about 9 weeks to go now.  The excitement is building!

Jingle Belles *TEXT* Me

Our mission this time is to "make a holiday card with the emphasis on the words".  So for my first card I chose to highlight this Memory Box die I cut from white glitter paper which really is very sparkly, just not in the picture.  I used a pine bough embossing folder for the background and layered the green on the red then the white card back.  I came across this ribbon in my stash and just had to add it somehow to this card pulling the colors and the embossing motif together.  I only regretted not using gold glitter paper for the sentiment afterwards which might have been a little better with the gold in the ribbon.  

I managed to get a second card done a little quicker.  I used some papers that I had picked up on clearance last Christmas.  The deer are already printed and glittered on the paper.  I cut the panel from a different sheet and knew that I wanted to add some jingle bells along the bottom.  When I first laid it out, the bells seemed to disappear so I took a portion of a kraft-colored doily to put beneath the bells so they might stand out more and I think it worked pretty well.  I'm thinking that maybe I should have darkened it with a little VersaMark first, but I'm keeping it the way it is.

Now it's time to check out all the other Jingle Belles and what they've been "texting" these last two weeks.  

Keeping Busy On The Weekend

We got a tease of spring this weekend.  Temps rose to just above 60º Saturday so HWNSNBP suggested a bike ride and I was up for it.  We headed out to the bike path at Duke Island Park which is on the Raritan River, just east of the confluence of the North Branch and South Branch rivers.  I only brought my cell with me this time, so when we saw all the geese standing in the rushing water I didn't get a very clear picture of them.  There were tons of them all along the river and lots of walkers on the path.  As pleasant as it was I was glad I had my gloves on and Arctic 180's under my bike helmet, though I know I wasn't there to make any fashion statements.

When we got back home I was going through some more "stuff" , in this case papers, from the stamp cave and came across this page I had torn out of an old sketch pad from years ago.  This was an oil pastel that I did while spending a week in Cape Cod with my mother and sister shortly after my other sister had passed away.  

I never noted the name of the structure, which I'm assuming is a lighthouse in the distance, and a quick search of the internet has proved useless because none of the real pictures of lighthouses that I found resemble what I drew, and I think that portion of land in the picture was much farther away than it appears in my drawing.  But I do remember we were able to walk right out the back door of the time share and sit on the beach any time we wanted.  And I learned that oil pastels blend well in the warm sun, but are a bit messy on the hands.  

It's very easy to get lost in the "mess" when going through my craft room.  But after I did some purging I did sit down to do a couple of cards for my Jingle Belles challenge which will be in a separate post.  I guess I felt a little energized from all the fresh air.

On Sunday it was a little cooler but still close to 60º so we did go for another ride though we cut it short because of the wind.  That outing seemed to work quite the opposite for me.  We did some quick errands which tired me out even more but on the way home we detoured for.........

a Shamrock Shake at McDonald's!

It was just the refreshing SWEET treat I needed before my New Action Plan (NAP).  Things seem to be moving along so fast.  Hard to believe that we're more than half way through February already and thinking about St. Patrick's Day.  Or better yet, Daylight Savings Time which comes in less than three weeks.  Something to look forward to.

If you'd like to check out some other SWEET things from Our Beautiful World click here.

Just a "Little" Journaling

A few days ago, in my news feed on Facebook, one of the weather sites that I follow posted this image of an impending storm.  This is a windflow map (not sure if that's an official name, but it indicates the flow of the winds).  I really thought it was so pretty and it inspired me to do the drawing below in my little art journal.  

Image from weathernj.com

I used some of my new colored Micron pens.  (There are certain perks from working in a school office and getting e-mails from vendors, especially art supply vendors that I can order from outside of school and still get the coupons and sales.)

One of the tangles that I recently added to my tangle calendar was Tamisolo by Hanny Nura.  I liked it a lot and thought that it would look pretty cool with color in those tips.  I had recently gotten some new pencils (Caran D'Ache Pablo permanent color pencils) and wanted to give them a try. The top one with all the colors looks a little milky because I did go over the colored areas with the white pencil in the set in an attempt to use it as a blender.  It did blend, but the downside was the milkiness of the colors afterwards. 

On the second one I stuck with a certain pallet, one combination for all the tangles that went left and another for the tangles that went right.  

This is a 3.5 x 5 inch journal with 100 lb. weight paper which makes it good for wet media and a little toothy for dry.  The pencils do well on the pages with blending but I think it's a bit to toothy for the Micron pens, but that probably won't stop me for doing more work with the pens in it.  

Last Saturday

Hot air balloons in February!  Who would have believed it.  Our son stopped by before going to his refereeing job last Saturday as I was just getting up.  He said there were balloons outside and I thought I was hearing things but there they were.  He had seen 5 on his way here, but by the time I got outside only 4 were visible.  Such a pretty sight on a brisk morning.  

Just a little while later, the tree service was due to arrive.  This was the view before their visit.

And this is it after.  I was and still am sad about losing that tree.  Even the squirrels seemed confused.

The wood shavings from the chain saws littered the snow covered lawn.  

Some of it still remains frozen to the ground.  

Edited to add link to Our Beautiful World - this week's theme is UP.

Jingle Belles Bling on the Holidays

Blinging it up for this Jingle Belles challenge.  I have glitter paper, metallic paper, rhinestone stickers, metallic ribbon and more.  I decided, going through my papers, to stick with silver and white, with a touch of blue for my color pallet.  The hardest part about this was the picture taking. It's pretty hard to see all the sparkle, but it's there.

Add caption

You can barely see the light blue stones in the top-most ornament.  I took some of the extra stones from the sentiment which originally said "joy to you" and added the darker blue stones to the snowflake.  Thank heavens for tweezers!  The large ornament paper came with the glitter swirls already on it.  And the bottom ornament is silver textured metallic paper.  

This card is a little larger than I normally do so I could fit all those ornaments on.  It's 5 x 7, which is still a standard size though.  I like larger cards, I just don't have a large selection of envelopes to go along with larger sizes.  

So, all you card makers out there - tell me what you do when you accidentally get something stuck to the back of your card and try pulling it off but manage to pull off a layer of paper too?  I think this card front is going to need a new backing!  

I've got to go check out the Jingle Belles gallery now - join me by clicking here.

Our Beautiful World - Bird is the Word

Looking at my first couple of photos one might think that we suddenly sprung ahead to mid-spring, but that is not the case.  The word of the week for Our Beautiful World is BIRD and I have a plethora of bird pictures to choose from, but I will keep it to only a few of my favorites.

I just loved being able to get close enough to get a picture of one of our bluebird visitors at the nest box while the clematis was blooming.  Sadly, the plant died and this past summer the blues bypassed our yard, but I still hold out hope that they will return again this summer.  We think this might have something to do with the multitude of nest boxes that our neighbor installed on their property last spring and the fact that we were not able to prepare the garden appropriately enough for our visitors to be comfortable there.  The bluebirds like to nest in open areas and unfortunately, because of my back issues and HWNSNBP's busy schedule, the garden got away from us this year and looked more like a field of waist-high weeds. 

We hope that with some concerted effort we might be able to clear out the offending area and be lucky enough to get more pictures like the one below.  Those open mouths remind me of spring crocuses.

I promised only a couple of bird photos so I am just going to add this photo that I took last week (and posted last week already) as it inspired me to do the little watercolor below it this week.

I'm kind of bummed today because we had to have one of our beautiful maple trees from the backyard removed today.  We noticed that the tree was wet last weekend during a dry, warm day meaning that the trunk probably had been damaged/cracked.  Being only about 15' from the house, there was too much of a risk of it cracking further and damaging the house or harming someone so we opted to have it removed.  It was one of the trees that we hung our bird feeders in so now we will have to find new hang-outs for the feeders.  Hopefully, not too far from the house so we can still enjoy looking at the birds that have become accustomed to their 3-squares here.  

The tree not only provided a place for the birds to eat, but it provided shade for our kitchen area and back of the house - that will be missed dearly in the summer.  I shall have to get used to the new landscape.  

Please take a look at all the other bird photos from around the world that have been posted at Our Beautiful World this week.  

Oh, and if you would like to see more of my bird pictures, please click on the Bird, or Bluebird links on my sidebar.

January Tangles

I'm starting my Tangle calendar again for 2016.  Here are the tangles that I worked on this month. Listed by date, name of tangle, and name of the tangles originator.

Jan. 1 - Win-Zetta/Lorreta West

Jan. 2 - Gotcha/Karin Godyns

Jan. 3 - Layse - Sandra Strait

Jan. 4 - Contacted/Allyn Mae Johnston

Jan. 5 - Marnie/Chrissie Frampton

Jan. 6 - Hua/Damy(Mei Hua Teng)

Jan. 7 - Oybay/Antonine Koval

Jan. 8 - Puchong/Michelle Linn

Jan. 9 - Plop/Beth Snoderly

Jan. 10 - BALA/Damy Teng

Jan. 11 - Autumnal/Daniel Lamothe

Jan. 12 - 2-S/Mina Hsiao(Ping-Min Hsiao)

Jan. 13 - Calix/Judy Murphy

Jan. 14 - Fe-Ba/Lisa Chang

Jan. 15 - Sand/Adele Bruno

Jan. 16 - Wedge/Rosemary Turpin

Jan. 17 - Jasmin/Simone Bishoff

Jan. 18 - Organic/Sayantika Ray

Jan. 19 - Damya/Hsin-Ya Hsu

Jan. 20 - Subline/Diane Tai

Jan. 21 - Caught/Christine Reyes

Jan. 22 - Pineple/Mei Hua Teng

Jan. 23 - O'Brien/ME - Inspired by Sabrina's Photo

Jan. 24 - Unnamed/ME - Inspired by a stitched card I saw on Pinterest, lost link

Jan. 25 - Croissant/Yu Ru Chen

Jan. 26 - 2SS2/Mina Hsiao

Jan. 27 - Planateen/Sandra Strait

Jan. 28 - 25 Castle Street/Neil Burley

Jan. 29 - Snowflower/Cynthia Gannon

Jan. 30 - Drifts/Chris Gerstner

Jan. 31 - Tamisolo/Hanny Nura

I'll post some of the tiles I worked on at a later date.

Photo Finish

HWNSNBP asked me what I was doing as he watched me trying to take a selfie.  I really don't like pictures of myself but the final prompt for this month is SELF.  It has been a fun month of prompts in Clare's Photo Challenge and a good way to start off the year creatively.  

Wrapping up with a couple of other projects that I finished this past week......

This sliver of wood was part of a shim that the construction works discarded when they were building our garage this fall.  I picked it up on a whim thinking a lighthouse would look good on it, but it took me a while to actually sit down and do it.  I sketched the Barnegat Lighthouse in pencil and then used watercolors to paint it.  Not sure that was the best medium to use, but it was just a whim.  I think I'll tack it up in the garage somewhere.

And attempting to straighten up my work table I came across some pieces of projects that never came to pass.  This label swing card needed some work.  I had the white label ready and found some flowers that had been stamped in the matching color.  Then I took a new embossing folder and embossed the leaves on the right panel.  I used a stamp from Summer Silhouettes to add the leaves on the left panel.  

The variegated effect was quite accidental.  The stamp didn't quite make a full impression so I took a marker of the same color to fill in the leaves that needed it.  It was the spray just above my finger in the photo above that needed it.  But I liked the way that the leaves took on different intensities with the addition of the color, so I colored over some of the other leaves randomly on the panel.  How do you think it came out?  

I need a couple of birthday cards for the beginning of February so I've got a bit of a start with this one.  I've also got a bigger project going for my daughter-in-law's baby shower which I'll share later on.  And then there's Valentine's Day too.  February looks to be a busy month!

Thanks to Clare for her wonderful January photo prompts and the jump-start to 2016!