Vacation Time Woes

David and I were supposed to leave on our June vacation Saturday morning but we are still in Toledo. There are lots of issues from a rainy forecast to a 911 call, or two.

The really rainy forecast means the natural light won’t be good for train photographs, there is a higher possibility minor league games would be rained out or delayed and my barometric body will ache more! That’s not such a matter because after a couple of failed attempts at getting in the shower last weekend. One of the EMTs was there for both the call where the transfer chair broke and I needed help transferring to my manual wheelchair Friday night and then on Sunday when I actually belly flopped in the hallway getting up that last step. He mentioned an Aunt with knee problems that mimic the hyperextension and foot drop I have and commented that our stairs and bathroom setup was dangerous. After Sunday he also suggested that we should give up the thought of me being upstairs at all. He’s right, but the shower is upstairs!

My dad started the plan to turn the extra room off our kitchen, that we use for mostly storage now, into an accessible bathroom with a roll-in shower in March. That’s still a couplafew months in the future and it’s not my intention to wait that long for a shower!! We went to a local hotel with a good roll-in for a night and I got a good shower, but I really had to admit that the hotel bed lacked the back support for a decent night’s sleep and I dreaded the thought of folding into the car all week.

So here’s the deal: The bad weather means David got to go play in a couple of poker tournaments at the local casino. That’s something he’s wanted to do and he figured out that it was about even cost to traveling for a day (except that traveling doesn’t have a chance of winning the money back!) I’m staying home this trip and I moved my appointment at The Ability Center up. I hope they can steer me in the right direction for a hospital or nursing facility that will do an assisted shower on an appointment basis until our renovated bathroom is done. I’m also seeing about a home health aide to help me with some things while David is at work, including using that shower when it’s done. David will be going on at least the last half of our vacation because the time and place choice was to attend our niece’s high school graduation. Emma’s been legally my niece for 6-12 years but David’s niece her entire life! Even if I can't go, he needs to. I feel bad that I won’t be able to go. I’ve been to Tori’s and Rina’s ceremony in 2012 and Ben’s in 2013 and I was really looking forward to being at Emma’s too.

Looking ahead, we’ve stepped up looking at used vans for a second car. Something I can drive the power chair into the passenger’s side and not have to climb in the car to travel would help beyond telling! If the upgrades my therapist wants on my chair happen, combining it with a van will make traveling comfortable again. Keeping my fingers crossed!


When I haven’t been waiting for paramedics and crying in frustration in the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on my scrapping and reading goals. I’m close to finished with “Chasing The Scream” which is nonfiction about the war on drugs history and future. It’s a great book that really makes you think. I’ll be doing my book review soon as I’m close to the end of a fairly long book and I’ll give some of my thoughts in that review. After such a serious read, look for my next book to be a fiction thriller again.

Last month was a banner month for my page-a-day scrap goal! I’m ahead again this month too. I’ve been a little creativity-taxed the past couple days, so I used templates for three layouts Saturday and one Sunday morning.


I’ve done some more Art Journaling, my scrap poetry and therapy.

Credits: I’m Your Biggest Fan by Seatrout Scraps, 

Hope Floats by Pixelily Designs, inspired by the song Hero by Loma Vista

Credits: Twilight by Red Dog Designs, Distressed by Created by Jill Designs, 

Alpha from Secret Agent by Just For Fun Designs

Remember the therapy pages are to get the negativity OUT of me and into pixels! It’s not like I’m going to cut off my ear or anything.

And with that comment my mother is looking down at me and I can hear the heavenly echoes telling me Andy Warhol’s work is "an inspired stock boy." :) We always had a fun running argument about the quality of Van Gogh vs Warhol.


Here’s a recent one that’s not so dark! It was for the template challenge at Gotta Pixel:

Credits: Kitty Love by Kristmess Designs, challenge template by Lindsay Jane

And here are this year’s crocuses that I scrapped Sunday morning:

Credits: Signs of Spring Monthly Mix by Gingerbread Ladies, 

“Selfie” hop template by Dear Friends Designs

I didn’t use a template for this one a while back, but I ended up creating a template based on it!

Credits: I’m Your Biggest Fan by Seatrout Scraps, 

Template by Digitalegacies Designs

Of course, if I made a template, there is a freebie!

Click image to go to download

Smashing Defined…Sorta

I’ve been getting lots of comments asking and guessing about Smashing/Smash Books.  I am NOT an authority here, but I’m glad to explain my use of the idea!

First a little background. My first acquaintance with Smash books was the video promoting the Smash Book line by K&Company on a blog back in early 2011.  The SMASH line was first released by K&Company in the spring of 2011. That’s the video I saw on my blog post I Want To Get Smashed from the end of last month. I loved the idea from the video, but since I’m a digital scrapbooker, it was an idea I put away in the back of my brain in case I ever wanted to use it.

Both of my Grandmothers had books done in a similar way. Noni’s photo albums included newspaper clippings, invitations and prayer cards mixed in with her photos and they weren’t in the strict chronological order mine are. There were lots of comments and dates and it was obvious what eras the items belonged to. Grandma had a serious smash book of the 1940s with pictures and words cut out of magazines; pictures of things she liked or wanted and inspiring, happy words. They weren’t arranged as elegant pages, just happy pages; things she wanted to see and think about. I didn’t keep that book and now I’m really wishing I had! It’s really not any different than my great-grandmother’s Bible that has passages underlined and photos, cards and clipping in between the pages. All of them are personal books that bring peace and smiles. This past spring, Tori made a similar style book for a friend to the one Grandma had made. It was a remembrance for a friend who was going to a different college.

SMASH Stick is felt tip pen on one end and glue stick on the other

Today’s SMASH Book by K&Company is pretty much the same thing. All right, no, it’s not a Bible, but you can write or paste in Bible verses if that is a part of what makes you feel good. You could make your smash book a bold and full personal devotional book. What a smash book is, is totally custom to the person making it; there is no set way, there are no rules. The book itself can be a theme, for instance there is a wedding themed smash book which can hold planning notes, cards, photos, favors, receipts, personal thoughts jotted down with the SMASH stick; all of your wedding mementos. Or just use your smash book to hold random thoughts, a funny cartoon or drawing, inspirational quotes and some things you’d like to buy in the next year. Google Smash Book and look at the images; endless ideas!

But you don’t have to buy the official SMASH books to Smash. As I said, Noni “smashed” in her old black paper photo album and Grandma “smashed” on very nice writing paper. Mums “smashed” in her most used and treasured Bible. 

Smashing used as a craft verb is something I’ve read on several blogs where people have talked about Smash Books. It’s like one scraps when putting together a scrapbook, one smashes when putting things in a smash book. The actual difference between scrapbooking and smash booking is organization. Scrapbook pages are carefully planned out. They utilize matching papers and embellishments with photos and sometimes ephemera to create the page as a work of art in and of itself bringing a memory to life through the photos and journaling. A smash book relies on the tactile items as they connect to memories with some or a lot of journaling and elements. The pages don’t have to be laid out artistically, as they say “just smash it in.”

Now, most of the visitors at The Chronicles of Nani are the creative types. I think that’s where smash and scrap blur a little. We just can’t glue something into a book without something that makes it unique, artsy. Back to the “no rules” clause. Anything you do with a smash book is right. To me, especially after seeing books that Noni and Grandma kept, in the USA and Italy 50+ years ago, Smash books are “back to basics.” It’s the culmination of scrapbooks, art journals, devotionals and trinket boxes all in one and with the concept of the original scrapbooks long before they were an art form. They’re a great way for someone who is busy to keep their memories, a wonderful book of the most special things and a central place for all the little mementos that are too small for a major presentation but too sweet to dispose of and forget. In a way, smash books are like the Blog Friday Fragments many of us do each week with Half Past Kissin Time!

So Nani and smash books. You’ll remember in that original post I did about smashing, 181 baseball ticket stubs. I’m not throwing out my baseball ticket stubs! But in cleaning through things to unearth my craft room, the woman cave, I realized there were other things, I have concert tickets, jokes I printed, inspirational quotes, cards and little bits of personal ephemera from things I’ve done and places I’ve been. When I dropped that envelope with all my baseball ticket stubs and had to put them back in order, the memory of the smash books hit me. I also had a ton of paper scrapbooking supplies that I’m not using anymore, so it all kind of fell together.


I’d like to share some of the Smash Archive book. It goes to the end of ish2004. I say “ish2004” because while 2004 is the stopping point of this book, the beginning isn’t so defined.  I started in 1966, but I have some photos and mementos from my grandparents. They are things that a part of me and make me smile, even if I couldn’t possibly have been there for them!

For the cover, I used a three-ring binder that I had in a retro-looking aqua. I titled it with some stickers I had in my scrapbooking stash. I think I’m going to use a plastic dust cover on it or replace those stickers with ones that stick better. The cover is a work in progress.

 

I made a “smash band” for holding the book closed, thereby protecting the pages, by using an extra-long rubber band with a smiley clip from my office supplies.

You see from the first page that I’m not dwelling on layout as much as placement. I want to make sure things fit on the page, its okay if they overlap a little, it’s okay if they don’t. Things don’t have to be related but I have to be able to read and see the pictures. I did add the Best Friends sticker to the picture of me with John, Kelly and Scotty. That written piece in the corner is my personal mission statement from many years ago and my signature. I have a few things I’d handwritten because I want to remember how legible my handwriting and printing used to be now that MS has robbed me of my penmanship

As you can see, it’s a blocked page of special little things; a bookmark, top of an M&M box, photo of Mom, a Cracker Jack prize baseball card, ticket from World Of Coke in Atlanta and a printed on paper photo of Eric Karros in Dodger Blue, purrrr! ;) That photo was from about a decade before I met my husband!

Remember the whole inspiration was the baseball ticket stubs:

SO much better than scattered on the floor!

And this one is M&Ms. I collect M&Ms and bought all kinds of M&Ms scrapbook stuff, but I never had any reason to scrap using M&Ms stuff. Now it doesn’t matter; I can smash the M&Ms in anywhere!

So there’s the peek at what and how I’ve smashed so far. I know me and can already see the desire to do some different things, so I’m sure my style here will change and grow which is why I wanted to smash the older items first, so they are represented by my older smashing style. It’s just like with my scrapbooks; I won’t go back and redo my older digital pages, although my skill level is much better now because the skill level where I started is part of a memory too.

I Want To Get Smashed

I am NOT being compensated for this post in any way. 

I just really want one of these!

I decided Saturday morning that I need to do some Smashing! I picked up and dropped the large envelope with my baseball ticket stubs in it, all of them since 1992. I counted them, 181 ticket stubs showered onto the floor now completely out of the OCD chronological order I had them in. Of course I know how many there were in that envelope because I’ve put them back in chronological order. Oh, I don’t really have OCD, just some obsessive order tendencies. Disorganization makes me crazy, but not certifiable, not yet anyway.

So Smashing, with a capital S is as in Smash Journal. I saw a video for Smash Journals last year and was intrigued. I mean, really they are very old school scrapbooks. Someplace to keep clippings, notes, ephemera; like baseball ticket stubs. Here’s the demo video I saw:


I love this! I wanted to buy one the first time I saw the video, but I wasn’t in the financial position to do it and just sort of let the thought go. But in re-sorting all the ticket stubs I realized that I remember every one of those games. Maybe I don’t remember who won, the score or even a play from the game, although for a lot of them I do, but the ticket makes me remember who was there with me, a detail from the day. The first game I saw in 2000 was in Cincinnati in April. John and I went and it was definitely a hot chocolate game. The ticket stub brought back that memory with a friend that was so close to me. I have little mementos, cartoons, notes and fun clippings in boxes, folders, drawers and I never look at them because they are all over and not organized, A Smash book doesn’t organize per se, but it puts all those things in one place and assembles fairly quick because it’s almost a collage, just fun things in a book. How great to browse without looking all over or forgetting about things that bring back sweet memories and inspire creativity!

Here are some photos from the web of what a Smash Book can look like.  They are very personl and the possibilities are endlessly unique.

click images to see original blog.

I love the pockets on this; I'll have to have lots of pockets!

You know there will be plenty of coffee in mine too!

 I like this for the pockets and semi-flat trinkets.

Now, while I really do want a real smash book kit with the stick and flags and tapes and all, right now it’s still beyond my budget. But what I do have is all those tidbits I want to save and paper scrapbook supplies I don’t use anymore because I do my scrapping digital now. I had thought I was going to package it all up and sell or donate, but now I think it will at the very least be my “Archive Smash Book.” I’ll need to gather everything, which will work well with my desire to get things organized here and get things in books instead of all over and prone to spill out all over the floor! I’d like to be able to get an actual Smash Book for 2013, but for now, I’m going to gather all of my little things and use up the paper scrap leftovers. I’m kind of excited to have all my special things gathered in one place.

Crafty Inspiration

What wonderful things have you made with glass jars and bottles?  I know I've made party favors and gifts, even vignettes for decorating.  I checked out Sunburst Bottle on the web and just the front page gave me some ideas and a sweet memory of crafting as a kid.

This is easy and a great project to do with kids. (Think about a rainy day in the summer!) Make a “leather” bottle! Using masking tape, brown shoe polish and glass bottles you can make a very nice decorative piece. Simply tear small pieces of masking tape and put them on the glass bottle in a patchwork way until the bottle is covered. Then stain them with the shoe polish and let it dry – faux leather bottle, simple and fun!

image from web

Take a look at the linked site. What’s the first crafty idea that comes to your mind?

Photo-Thank-You-blog Wednesday

Handmade coaster set from Flora

Sorry I’m posting late today! There are lots of times that I’m late with posting, usually because there is something going on in….non-cyber world. I simply can’t distinguish the two by calling one “real world.” I’ve exchanged cards, letters and tokens with people I’ve never shaken hands with. You are all real! We don’t touch each other’s hands, but we definitely touch each other’s hearts!

Okay, the photo, speaking of hands and hearts. Remember way back on December 7 when I told everyone reading about Flora’s Coasters that she made for Christmas guests at her home? Remember how I said she was giving a set away to one random reader? Well I was the lucky reader! Mr. Random was very kind to me. After receiving the note from Flora that I’d won, I sent my address info.

Now, you know from what I said about the sweet coaster sets that if I won it wasn’t going to be a gift to give, I consider these sweet coasters a gift from Flora to me! They arrived on Christmas Eve, totally like a present. I would have blogged about them sooner, but last week was pretty full with Rina here and I wanted to have a few minutes to tell you all about them properly!

Flora was modest when she called it a simple idea. The craftsmanship is superb! I got the very set she used in the step-by-step in her blog, or it was an identical set. They are beautiful and they’re green! That matches my eyes, my sweater, the colors in my future dream kitchen, my name ornament in our Christmas decorations…I just like green a LOT and being green only adds to how special the coasters are!

So, thank you Random for picking me and especially thank you Flora for sharing a great idea and so generously offering a set of the coasters to your readers!

Links
Flora's Blog, This and That

With A Little Help From My Friends

Yesterday was a very tiring, but very productive day. First was my hair appointment. After getting the kitchen shining on Monday, I deserved a little pampering. There’s nothing more comfortably social that chit chat with the stylist I’ve been with for the past 2-1/2 years. I had a stylist for many years back in Michigan, but she and I both moved out of state and she did not follow me to Ohio! Actually, she left before I did and I had many one-cut-stands, still not finding the one who I’d trust my hair with every time and even let them make suggestions.

I took a giant leap of faith in early 2009. I hadn’t had a cut in 2 years. That wasn’t the frustration of no stylist. That was me being all noble. My hair grows fast and I was growing it out to cut it short and donate the tail to Locks of Love. The Salon I go to, Camelot in Holland, OH, would send the pony tails to Locks of Love on my behalf. That’s how I met Jamie.

Jamie cut my hair into a cute short style after cutting three ponytails from it. Because of the way my hair was tapered, I had one ponytail that was about 13 inches in the middle and 2 almost 11 inch tails. The short style was cute and easy to take care of. It was shorter than I liked, but I needed pieces of at least 10 niches to donate. I’ve been seeing Jamie ever since. She does a great job and makes wonderful suggestions for flattering looks. Yesterday, after growing out my bangs to the stylish one-length that so many long-haired women wear for over a year, I had my bangs cut to the shorter length they had always been. I'm just not the constantly moving my hair from my face type! I think Jamie was as giddy as me with the results! No more straight hair in my face. I have bangs and the natural curl again! I also look a little younger than the 50 I’d been seeing in the mirror. (based on the change from 44 with bangs last year)



After the haircut, I had four boxes on my front porch! I still expect a few more things that I’ve ordered, three more boxes, but I now have all the parts of Kelly’s present so I can wrap that and send it on its way to Sikeston


I also got a present I bought for me:

YAY Spatulas!!

Yes, David laughed at me too. But the rubber scrapers we have had seen better days, especially the little one that I still used even after the top of it met with a disposal accident. These ones have heavy duty plastic handles and are very strong and supple. I used them yesterday and LOVED them!


Next it was on to loaves! I got the “Christmas Gift Loaf” recipe from reading Lynn’s blog, Cottage and Creek. She made “Holiday Pumpkin Loaf” on Thanksgiving Day and shared photos with a link to the recipe. Oh my, it looked so good! It’s a great recipe that leaves some room to play, to make it your own.

My "Loaded Loaves"

I made 2 loaves that will be gifts and two mini loaves to try them out. I added raisins to the recipe and after David and I tried it, I’ll probably use a little less ginger than the recipe calls for next time. I think it tastes wonderful, but David doesn’t care for the ginger flavor. I doubled the recipe and it made 2 loaves and 2 minis. Maybe next time, I’ll add the ginger last and divide the batter to make half with and half without

Flora's coasters

If you’re still thinking of some non-edible gift ideas with a personal touch that you still have time to make, there is a great idea for coaster sets on Flora’s blog, This and That. They are so sweet! The coaster sets are so cute and I do still need a couple small gifts. There’s just not enough time to cross stitch a set of ornaments anymore! If you give a look before Saturday (12/10) when she’s going to draw a name from the comments, you can have a chance to win a hand-made set of coasters from her! I entered for the drawing, but should I win, I don’t know if I would give them as a gift. Maybe I’d give them to David so I’d have them too!

Okay, off to fix lunch and get back to work!



Links

Lynne’s blog: Cottage and Creek, Holiday Pumpkin Loaf

Christmas Gift Loaf Recipe at allrecipes.com

Flora’s blog: This and That, Christmas Gifts to Make

The Morning After

It was raining this morning, so maybe that had something to do with it, but, oh was I sore! I was wondering if maybe I’d overdone it a bit yesterday, but right now I’m feeling pretty good. So maybe it was more the rain than anything this morning. My hands are still a little clumbsy though. You should see what this looked like before I typo and spell checked it! In looking ahead to a straight week of baking coming up before Christmas, I think I’ll slow down a little and stretch it out. I can do the Krisp Kringles and frosted cookies a little earlier because they keep well.

This is from the Davinities Test Kitchen. I am SO pleased! They are almond sugar cookies with sprinkled almond buttercream. The distinction here is that it’s not cream made with almond butter, but butter cream splashed with almond milk. That’s a note to me because I didn’t write it down yet. The almond sugar cookies are a new Davinities recipe and I might add them to this year’s lineup; that’s how pleased I am with my new recipe!

Every now and then, a recipe just sounds so good that you have to buy that one ingredient you’ve never used, even though it comes in a larger bag and the recipe only calls for a cup. That was me with Marie’s recipe for the French Macarons. Also, just the cookie part without the French cream filling is very low in Weight Watchers points! But that left me with a large bag of almond flour left, so almonds have been on my cooking creative brain lately. The macarons were very good, but I’ll probably make them again after I can afford a standing mixer! In this recipe, the almond sugar cookie dough is made into small balls, rolled in almond flour and placed on parchment to be flattened lightly with the bottom of a glass. Now I just need to let the frosting set and I can package a sample up this evening to add to the boxes.

That’s the formal tree in my contemporary living room that I mentioned yesterday. The little coffee bar was to the left, next to the desk. Oh, I was wrong about the burgundy dress on the angel. I have a gold-haired light-up angel ornament with a burgundy dress. The gold angel on top is the one on top of our tree at home now. This was in 2001 or 02. There wasn’t a date on the photo and I don’t really have time to do an album search to get the year, but it was after I fell in love with a lace ornament with pink and light blue ribbon, so I got 6 light blue glass balls to make it work!

While I’m showing off that tree, let’s visit the other extreme.

This photo is Dave and me in the finished basement of our home in Southgate Michigan, in 1973. We’re making Christmas ornaments! Mom did a craft with us at Christmastime every year. In 1973, when Dave was six and I was seven, Mom made homemade uncolored play dough, rolled it out and used Christmas cookie cutters on it. Then she baked them with ornament hooks in them. They came out hard and once they cooled, we went to town with the paint! Mom painted with us and did a camel with a fringed blanket on it and eyes and everything. It was gorgeous and it frustrated me almost beyond what my 7-year-old ego could stand! I tried, I really tried, to paint my ornaments in beautiful detail like Mom’s camel. She’d done a pretty angel and some balls, but the camel is what will always stick out in my mind as a skill I couldn’t quite accomplish. Never mind that Mom painted ceramics as a hobby and I was 7 years old at the time. I just wanted my ornaments to look as nice as that darned camel.

It is a great memory. I know now that my Mom was just very talented with paint! I can’t paint that well now, either. A generation later, I did a Christmas craft every year with Tori and Rina when they were little. We made felt and sequin ornaments, glitter drawing on satin balls and we even did play dough ornaments one year. There were stars and bells and circles, but, there were NO CAMELS! We used to put the name and date of the artist on the back, so if the ornaments survived, we’d know when each craft was done. I was almost in tears in 2008. The girls got me an ornament for Christmas, a glass baseball with my name on the front. They made sure I looked on the back. They had the year put on the back, “because we always dated the special ones.”

And now it’s time to clean up the kitchen, put together my grocery list and wrap up the last of the packages for the mail tomorrow.

Monday Mug Shot

Button Hole

West Branch, Michigan

Oddest thing about this mug is that I inherited it… and I bought it.

As so many of us are in holiday shopping mode the start of this week after Christmas, the mug brought back some sweet memories. I used to love shopping the day after Thanksgiving in the small towns near Grandma’s house.

Grandma didn’t really enjoy the shopping, so I usually went with Mom. I spent a weekend up at Grandma’s every couple months. I usually spent my “comp vacation,” the extra week I got in August for all the 55-hour weeks in the spring, with Grandma. When I was there during the week, we’d do lunch or shopping but in the summer the weekends were busy at the lake, so we’d go to the towns that were away from the lake from her house. West Branch was one of those places.

West Branch is home of my favorite Chinese restaurant in all of Michigan and we usually found ourselves eating a meal there when I visited. Most of the time it was just us, but we also brought one of her friends with us from time to time. I loved spending time with Grandma and she had very sweet friends too.

When we were in West Branch we occasionally shopped at K-Mart, because K-Mart was close at only a half hour away. I knew where the coin shop was because Grandma and I collected coins and I also knew where the Button Hole was. I think Button Hole was Grandma’s favorite local shop. They had a nice collection of fabrics and all the notions you could want for sewing or quilting. Okay, the shop was a half hour from her house and most of the staff knew her on sight, some of them by name! She enjoyed seeing the new quilting stuff that was in and I don’t think she ever left the store without something new. She often asked me when I was going to start quilting. Grandma didn’t start quilting until she retired, so I always told her I had time to learn when I retire.

The biggest reason Grandma didn’t like to shop the day after Thanksgiving is because the sleepy up-north towns, that were extra sleepy in the winter, woke up like a summer weekend day on that Friday! The little towns were pretty quiet compared to Metro Detroit on summer weekends, but my Grandmother, who used to give me white knuckles when she weaved in and out of rush hour traffic taking me home with her on weekends after work, had chosen to forget about driving in traffic too! One Back Friday afternoon, before it was called Black Friday, I showed Mom Grandma’s favorite shop in West Branch so she could buy some quilting notions for her Christmas stocking. They had just gotten these mugs in and knowing that Grandma didn’t drive out that far alone in the winter, it was a pretty good chance she’d be surprised.

She was surprised on Christmas Morning part because she didn’t know they had mugs and part because she didn’t think we’d gone into the downtown area in West Branch that day. I liked doing the little surprises for Grandma on Christmas, stuff she wasn’t expecting or fun gifts. One year, after commenting that the baseball cards I collected weren’t real because they didn’t have bubble gum. I got her a pack of ten-year old baseball cards, with bubble gum. She giggled about them all day. One year I had gone to the National Quilting Museum in Paducah when I was in the area for a job interview. I wanted to find her something that said National Quilting Museum on it. I found a mini quilt square one, made out of fabric, with the museum’s logo. She got completely fussed over at the next Quilt Guild meeting she went to after she went home.

And now the mug is mine again. It holds so much more than coffee.

Bring Me Chocolate Bunnies, Bring Me Spring!

“Chocolate Easter bunny
In a jelly bean nest,
I'm saving you for very last
Because I love you best.
I'll only take a nibble
From the tip of your ear
And one bite from the other side
So that you won't look weird...”

excerpt from “Patience”
by Bobby Katz

You can read that whole poem and more at Celebrations.com. They have some great ideas for things to make your Easter celebration even better than just what the bunny brings! There are more poems, party ideas and recipes for baked Easter goodies too!

Nothing like preplanning, huh? I’m working on some Easter scrapbook stuff, so this was a neat site to check out , lots of good craft ideas too!

In addition to it’s religious significance, Easter is a time of getting ready to welcome in spring! Okay, okay, last year Easter was a time of getting snowed back home shortly after taking off for Grandma’s and making a snow bunny the next day,but that was a good Easter memory too! Helping David build his first snow creature, we were child-Picassos for the day!

My favorite Easter memory is more a favorite Easter tradition. Grandma and Papa always came to our place for Easter weekend once they were living up north. The Saturday night before Easter was egg night. that was a Grandma and me thing. When I was in my early 20s, we’d sit at the kitchen table with a bottle of white wine and a dozen boiled eggs and all kinds of decorations. Sometimes, as we got near the bottom of that bottle of wine, the eggs had a “special” look. hehe

Of course some 20 years later neither one of us drinks too much anymore and we’d start feeling too tipsy to decorate eggs by the second glass! Now we go to Grandma’s house and she takes the brood out for Easter dinner the Saturday before, but sometimes we still do eggs, in fact a couple years ago, David helped and we made sports ball eggs. I gotta tell ya, footballs are just naturals for eggs!

If you want some other ideas for egg decorating after you checkout the recipes, celebration.com has 20 Easter egg decorating ideas. I think maybe Grandma and I should do some eggs this year!

A Better Way To Profit From Your Talents!

If you make and sell handmade gifts, or make and have ever thought about selling your handmade gifts, you really need to check out Art Fire at artfire.com.

A small artisan can list up to ten items at a time including pictures with a free account and there are no fees for sales! They do have a premium membership that lets you sell an unlimited number of products and other preferred features too. Right now, that service is only $7 a month! No fees for sales in the premium package either. Plus, Art Fire has partnered with Trees for the Future, who is planting a tree for every new member. You know how much I support the “no-pain eco-friendly” stuff!

If you’ve ever thought about testing the internet sales waters with your handmade gift items and don’t want the eBay fees whether or not you even get a look at your listing, Art-Fire is a great opportunity!