Friday By Request

Credits: Kit - "Falling Into Fall" by Piggyscraps

FBR day after Thanksgiving

Happy Leftovers Day! Is everyone still stuffed from yesterday? Thanksgiving is being especially thankful for good company and GOOD EATS!

I had a request left in the comments earlier this week. “Name 6 things you are thankful for,” from Seamhead Gypsy who said, “this should be an easy one.”

Only six? That’s NOT easy!

I won’t count the number one thing I’m thankful for today. I’m thankful that Black Friday exists to give the economy a little nudge. I am REALLY thankful that participation is not compulsory!

The next big thing I’m thankful for the Friday after Thanksgiving is LEFTOVERS! Especially when my Dad lets me take home the leftover Verona coffee and the Thanksgiving turkey carcass for soup! Today is a day of soup-making and hopefully I can get David to joining me for congee tomorrow!

But now, the six for FBR!

I’m Thankful
for Seamhead Gypsy

1. David

Growing up I was not the typical girl. I never had a dream wedding in mind or for that matter, even that I might be married one day. That idea that a man in my life was nonessential lasted for over 38 years!

Now, I’ve become a total girl and do have those silly thoughts in my head. maybe one day there will be a wedding. While I’d never thought it would be mine, I’ve wanted to do a wedding scrapbook ever since I started paper scrapbooking. Now, yeah, I look at wedding theme kits and my fantasy girlie brain starts purring.

But David to me is so much more than a fantasy man, which is why he makes me a giggly girl at times. He just “gets me” like no one ever has. I’m not a hearts and flowers romantic type, but I am a romantic. He knows how to romance me. He supports me, not just materially because I’m going through rough employment times, but he supports me completely. He makes me strong as a person and as a woman. He makes my inner-teenager swoon and is the perfect playmate for my inner child.

He is why now I can’t imagine living without what I never thought I wanted.

2. My family

The blood relatives and close friends who have made the difference in who I’ve become from who I was and are shaping who I will be. I am so lucky that I can tell you more than five people who have been dear friends and confidantes for over a decade, some of them for over two. I talk to Grandma at least once a week and Dad is never more than a call and a few miles away if I really need him. Tori and Rina have never let me lose my sense of wonder and desire to learn. Sometimes I feel so far away from everyone, but in my heart, they are all always close.

3. My future sister-in-law

My brother falls fast and hard and too many times that’s meant that he becomes a victim. There’s not a soft way to put that. He needs to be with a woman who will love him for the generous heart he has without trampling it, a strong woman who won’t take advantage of him or charge her strength by making him weak.

I think, and I truly hope I’m right, that he’s finally found that in Laura. He’s a great guy when he’s in between women, but he too often sold himself short and changed to be right for women who haven’t been worth it. This time, he’s happy and he is still that great guy.

I always said it would take one heck of a very special woman to be the right one for him. He’s probably more thankful than I am for her, but on behalf of everyone who loves the real Dave, thank you Laura, for loving the same guy we always have!


4. My faith

Plain and simple without my personal religious convictions and the faith and optimism that go with them, I couldn't possibly be making it right now.

5. HR departments that answer the phone, call back or at least send a form letter to acknowledge that a human being in need of a job has expressed an interest in their company.

Even if they have hired someone else to fill the open opportunity or if there is not an opening, the companies that have the respect to at least acknowledge that they were contacted are the best ones to hope to work for. I’ll remember the companies who have treated me like a person and act like a patron when I can.

6. The Internet

It’s not just a place to showcase my ego, but its someplace to make friends from all over the world. Someplace to learn about new cultures, share ideas and inspire other creative people just as they inspire me!

I also have relationships with cousins on both sides of my family that I wouldn't have without email and blogs! When miles are reduced to megabytes, we’re all closer!

Turkey Cookies and Snow Globes

I think I have everything gathered in appropriate places not to forget any of it tomorrow. I’m waiting for the frosting to set on my turkey cookies. The nice thing abut having Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt’s and Dad’s place is my Aunt’s 4-year-old twin grandkids have been there they last couple days. If anyone stops by tomorrow, they'll probably just think they did the frosting! LOL I’m NOT a frosting artist! Hey, as long as it’s chocolate and shaped like a turkey, it’s perfect!

David is working tonight, so I was playing for a while before supper. I’ve been wanting to try to do a snow globe for a while and thanks to a gorgeous piece of PD clip art and a great Photoshop tutorial from DevelopingWebs.net, here is my first ever snow globe!

(Background Paper by Tirza)

Has anyone else done one of these that has any idea how to do clear glass? The painting , "A Song of Angels," by William Bouguereau, is beautiful with the characters extracted in a clear ball, but as soon as I merged, the ball turned black. I tried a million ways to manipulate the file and it didn’t work. If there’s a background, the ball is clear as long as it’s still in layers or you flatten the whole thing. But try to make a png of just the snow globe and ZAP - it’s midnight in the snow! For the download I did the original painting and the extracted figures against a dark green background.

Sorry, this link is expired.

As always, I love to read your comments here at The Chronicles of Nani about Digitalegacies Designs products or anything else!

I hope everyone celebrating tomorrow has a Happy Thanksgiving and you all enjoy being the recipients of the first Christmas Gift I’m giving this year!

Have You Checked Out Book Swim?

Have you been curious?

Have you clicked on Book Swim? That icon is in my right column, the community bulletin board here at the coffee shop. You can find out more about them with a no-obligation click! I was talking to one of the regulars about Book Swim. He is also a regular at the library with his little princess, so he was skeptical about Book Swim. In wondering if it was really something he could use, we talked about the pros and cons. I don’t think books coming in the mail to my house or theirs would have replaced the library trips my nieces and I made when they were little. Walking in to the library with walls of books and a wonderfully decorated children’s area and having that be a treat, probably has a lot to do with why at 14, there is still a book next to the Game Boy in their tote bags! Making reading a treat is so important, especially in this electronic world. Heck, combining the two realities, Rina enjoys writing and reading stories on line. I think that’s awesome!

But then, the library, a good one, was three miles away from my home in Northville and there were two huge book stores in that same distance. I brought up my best friend, Kelly. Raised in Metro Detroit, where even the smallest suburbs have good libraries and abundant book stores with coffee shops, Kelly is in a small town in Missouri now. The library is kinda small and it’s a half hour drive to the nearest book seller/coffee shop. The local selection of kids books for story time with her grandkids isn’t even that big. There’s a case where a full catalog of books delivered to your door is a great idea. ANY post office can facilitate it, no matter how small or rural the town!

I also brought up that when I first became and Ohiogander, I was still working in Michigan. It was a 2-hour commute one-way. I left in the morning before either the library or any of the book stores were open and got home just a couple hours before they closed. I still had to have dinner and really, at that time the last thing I wanted to do was get back in the car for ANYTHING! But I still loved reading and enjoyed a little reading time before bed to relax. Book Swim is great if you have a long commute or are just on the go.

Of course, if you just like the convenience of a Netflix style book system, Book Swim is for you too! The Book Swim plans start under $20 and you can cancel at any time. In fact, right now you can get the $19.98 monthly membership for half off the first month! That’s the first month for $9.95 for their popular 3 books at a time plan. That can be a book for you and a couple for the kids to enjoy some family reading time or just 3 books for your own insatiable reading habit! It’s styled just like Netflix in that when you finish a book, send it back and they’ll send a new one from your list. The great thing about the 3 book plan is you can return one or two while reading the third. They’ll send two more. You can be never without a book and always with a new one on the way! And Book Swim pays all the shipping!

If anyone does try Book Swim, I’d love to hear what you think of it! Like I say at the top of the blog, I choose sponsors that are ideas I think are good! I’d love to hear what you think!

Photoblog Wednesday

David is SMILING at the pump?

Well, yeah! Gas was back down to a cool $1.689 a gallon on Sunday, but thanks to fuel perks for shopping at Giant Eagle...

I was smiling and it wasn't even going into my car!

What Were They Thinking in the 50s, Anyway?

Tonight my knee is just throbbing. Oh, there was no accident, I didn’t twist it, slip or even sleep on it wrong. It’s not from too much time only recumbent bike, either. It was hours and hours of standing up bent over a kitchen counter.

Oh, I’m really not complaining about the activity that wore out my already worn out knee. About this time every year, I start into my clean sweep phase. The holidays are coming and David and I will have friends over for our annual Christmas gathering, UNO and The Fabulous Dessert Bar. That tradition started Christmas evening in 2003.

It was our first Christmas without Mom and the entire schedule for Christmas day had changed. Dad had pretty much said okay to any idea I came up with and I wanted to do an open house and just invite everyone to stop in at any time for a snack, a drink, a meal, just stop by. My family of friends, the Zoo, all had other things with their families of relatives during the day, but said they’d stop that night. I think they wanted to make sure I was okay, my first Christmas, as I put it, as a grownup. Well, we ended up gorging on the desserts and Divinities I’d made and we played just a huge table of UNO. The tradition began!

In 2005, after David and I enjoyed a Christmas brunch for two, the whole gang was over in the evening for the festivities. However, we were not in Michigan in 2006 on Christmas Day. Christmas was on the weekend, so we spent it in Connecticut with his family, since the work holidays made it easier to take an extended weekend. We had UNO and The Fabulous Dessert Bar the Saturday before. Last year was my first year in Toledo and we moved the gathering officially to a Saturday right before Christmas since many of the guests had an hour+ drive!

Since Thanksgiving is not celebrated at my home, “Operation Clean Sweep” doesn’t have to be done before the end of November, but it does before the tree goes up shortly after December begins, so I have time to bake and get ready for the party!! David does the vacuuming because our vacuum cleaner is pretty heavy and I generally can’t pick it up and twist my bum knee all over when I try to use it! But I do lots of washing and dusting.

We have a sweet 1950s era house. The kitchen is totally 50s with the exception of our awesome digital oven! I love our oven! The first time I made cookies in it, before I lived here, I knew I would love calling that oven “my oven.” David and I agree that we don’t care for the original equipment push button electric stove, but we have a difference of opinion as to which is the better alternative. He says gas, I say modern electric. When the day comes that we start to build that model train layout and have to build the house over it, we’ll discuss that more in depth!

But what I dislike the most, what I just don’t get, is the counters. The counters in our sweet 50s kitchen are tile. I mean slippery, glazed tile squares joined with grout. There is no being careful. The grout will get icky. It will turn blotchy brown and wiping it will not make the grout white again. A few times a year I have to totally move everything off the counters and get serious! We have tile counters in the bathroom too and today was grout whitening day!

Grout whitening consists of very hot water, Soft Scrub with Clorox and a DT (disposed toothbrush). Yeah, I’m serious, use the toothbrush to fill in every line between the tiles and let it soak a little, the go back and scrub every line with the toothbrush until it’s white. So, my knee is very sore from all the standing, my back hurts a little from bending across the counter to get the back corners and my hands are stinging and dry from the bleach, but the counters look great!

(But I still maintain that a man came up with the idea for the tiles countertops in the 50s because his woman would have to clean the grout! grr....)