Accomplishments

Today, I got up with Mr. Handsome, knowing I needed to be ready to go to town when he headed in for work. Both he and our second-born work in our beautiful downtown on the bricks 3 miles from home. What a blessing.

You may or may not know that we have 4 drivers living at home and we have 2 working vehicles. 3 of those drivers have jobs and school. I'm the extra with neither. This puts me in the delightful position of being available to help everyone get where they need to be when they need to be there. So last night, 3 of my girls spent the night about an hour away. Kath, (second-born with a down-town job) had to be at work this morning, so she was home by midnight last night. We sat up to chat for another hour, btw.

The original plan was for me to ride to town w/Mr. Handsome so I could pick up the car Kath drove to work earlier so I would be able to meet the other 3 girls halfway on their return home. I followed that plan, and enjoyed spending some time chatting with Kath and her boss for awhile before taking the car. I bought some groceries and just reveled in having my own wheels. Then I got a text telling me that the girls had secured a ride home from the sleepover. Cool. Now what?

I decided to continue my plan of the year to take back my cluttered spaces in the house. I think it will take a year to complete the task (can it really be completed?). I cleaned out the 'fridge. I organized things, putting the condiments together, the salsas together, the oriental sauces, the Greek Yogurt and sour cream, . . . . you get the idea. I got a little OCD and turned all the labels forward. I wiped the sticky spots off the shelves. I felt so accomplished!

I moved on to the cupboard below our butler's pantry. It's a glorified hallway where there are cupboards, a counter, a small bar sink, and our coffee station for the house. It's where we keep our tea, cookbooks, vitamins, cereal, chips/crackers, "battery" drawer, and zip-locks and parchment paper. I focused on only one space, the cupboard below the sink. Do you know, we had no less than 8 sunblock, suntan, and skincare bottles there? I found tye-dye powders, trash bags, multiple vitamin bottles, thermoses, water filters, Kleenex tissues, cleaning supplies, and thermos mugs down there. No wonder it was such a mess! Now the freshly cleaned shelf liner can actually be SEEN! That's a beautiful thing.

It was 2:45 when I set out for my power walk. I really am determined to keep up with walking 4.2 miles in an hour or less three times a week. I don't enjoy it really. It doesn't energize me, it kinda drains me, but I KNOW it's good for me, so I take solace in that knowledge. I got a call from my Sweetie before I reached the halfway mark that he was off his lunch shift and headed out to run some errands. I knew I didn't have a hot meal prepared for him, but I could make a killer sandwich when he got home. I did. I made a turkey pastrami, oven-roasted turkey, romaine, avocado, red onion, Tasty-Lee tomato, provolone, on rye with mayo and spicy mustard amazing-wich. So yummy!

I can't say how proud I am of the fact that I arranged to get together with friends for drinks and snacks at Sweetgrass Dairy downtown tonight. We met with two couples we've known for over 20 years at 6pm in a noisy happinen' place. We shared laughs and stories and fun for nearly two hours. I happened to be set between the guys, and since the environment was so loud, I missed out on most of the ladies' conversation, and, instead, got in on the guys'. I actually enjoyed it. Men know how to shed the deep and important relational stuff and just enjoy life. Call it shallow if you like, I'd rather think of it as freeing. I kept reading the lips of my girlfriends as they talked, and I knew they were speaking of family and relationships and gatherings and such, while the guys talked about beer and memorable trips and work experiences and jokes. I have to say, I really enjoyed the lighter side of life for a change (even though I really wanted to hear about my friends and their kids and parents).

So what did I do creatively today? I "followed my heart," to coin a phrase. I had the house to myself, and I still worked to clean it up. It was what I wanted to do. I am on a mission. A mission to re-claim my home and my life. I've been stolen from through unfortunate experiences and circumstances, and I'm not going to play the victim any longer. I finally have the energy to do more than survive. I'm taking back the lost and stolen ground. I'm moving forward.

And that's something to celebrate. Here's to moving forward!

Creativity Today 2.0

Today I realized my bill-paying-records notebook only went up through this current month, and, of course, I am receiving bills for next month already. This notebook is one I made. It's a three-ring binder that I customized. I made colorful cardstock pockets for the mail (bills), and printed pages for inbetween for each month. Each month page has 31 day number lines, and a "Month" with a line for filling in said month at the top of the page. For each due date, I fill in the amount and who it goes to. When I pay that (on-line mostly) I write in the confirmation number right on that line. That way I have my own record of paying the bill.

I decided to make the process more fun by adding tabs to the side of the pages, and stamping the month on the tab. I'll have to take pics to share.

So I filled out those tabs and stamps and glued them onto the month pages between the colorful pocket pages. Seriously. I need pics.

In other news, I've decided that this year I am ready to shed unwanted stuff that is filling up my cupboards, closets, and drawers. I am giving myself a year, and I am NOT including the attic in this process. The house is plenty challenging all by itself. I've started by emptying my makeup drawer into a bag to set aside for at least a week. I didn't sort through all the junk in the drawer, I just moved it. For someone like me, this is empowering. I had stuff like old credit cards, clothes pins, movie ticket stubs, and lotions and makeup in that drawer. Ridiculous. Now it's all in a bag, set aside, and I get to enjoy a tidy drawer with only the stuff I am regularly using in it. Once I get a week or two away from the crammed up drawer experience, I'll go through the bag.

I think it will be evident what to do with most of the stuff.

I'm excited to see what this year will bring.

Regular Creativity

It's been like, FOREVER since I've posted on this blog. I was thinking about it as I was pumping through my powerwalk this evening and lamenting the neglect of my current blog over at wordpress. I thought to myself, perhaps I could write regularly about creativity on my fancyscrapper.blogspot blog.

So, today I was only creative in the kitchen. Still, it counts as creativity in my book. I wanted to make Chicken Pot Pie the Pioneer Woman way (which is from scratch). If you've ever had experience in the restaurant world, you know servers can work odd and demanding hours. Charlie worked lunch until closing, and then he opened dinner. That translates into coming home around 3 and going back at 3:45. Food must be ready at quite specific times.

I put the chicken in the oven at the time I left to buy groceries for the remaining ingredients. I called Em and Sam as I headed home to tell them I'd need their help to pull it all together. They were awesome! I wish I had pics of them working hard to put away the groceries, and then help assemble the meal. Samantha made the pie crust in our Ninja (a glorified blender/food-processor), Emily gathered all the other ingredients, and I chopped like a fiend! Em got into it, and cooked the filling while I finished out the measuring of the spices and cream and got out the crockery to bake it in.

As it was, Mr. Handsome had to wait 20 minutes for his lunch, but he enjoyed it immensely.

Once that was done, there were a great deal of dishes to deal with. Rebekah worked with me to get them all washed. Not having a dishwasher has its draw-backs. We make do.

My power walk was waiting on me. I'd showered and dressed for it. I don't like bathing twice in a day--seems redundant--but some days, there's just no way around it. I'm determined to give my aging body every chance at health, and exercise is a part of that. Also, I'd spent part of the earlier day checking some fabric against a chair that was ripped at my favorite doctor's office. He's taken care of our family for years, and now he has an upholstery need that I can help HIM with! Beautiful! I'm so happy to be able to return some of the care and love he's given us. He said today that he'll bring the chair to my house Friday so I can repair it over the weekend. It took some time in an already time-crunched day, but relationships are worth that to me.

So I took my power walk (and beat my best time? Crazy!), and then helped my youngest purchase a tablet on Amazon before basking in an amazing hot tub with a book. It melted me. My Sweet firstborn read through her paper for school to me before submitting it. She's so good with words, I had only one suggestion to make on the paper. My Mr. Handsome came home, and I fixed us both salads for dinner.

Since he's home so late, it's quite time for bed now. So my creativity for today was making lunch, and making it in time. Go me!

Addys for Class Instructions

Hello, fellow scrappers! This weekend I'm teaching 4 (maybe 5) classes in a Mini Scrappy Retreat right here in town. I'm super excited about it, and have been putting kits together all week. We will be doing 2 Scrappy Layouts, an Exploding Box (like the one I made for Kath's birthday), and a mini book with hand-stitched pages. I pondered over how to send the unused kits home with the guests who opt. to spend their time crafting on their own projects instead of following along with the classes. Plus there is one guest who will only be staying one day instead of both days, and I wanted her to have the benefits of taking the kits home that we'll do the day she's not there. But how will she know what to do with the materials if I'm not there to tell her?

Bing! Dawn's the light! I found instructions on-line! All my friends who will do these projects with me can just refresh their memories on how to do these projects by copying and pasting a link right here in my own little blog. The instructions for the mini book are actually the original ones that I saw and altered for my own style. So glad to have found it again!

So here goes:

Here's the addy to the exploding box: http://tinyurl.com/ye86j4

And the video instructions for the mini book: http://tinyurl.com/23hebo2"

So for those of you who did NOT get to join us (sad face here!), you can see a couple of things we did this weekend.

Tim Holtz

 

I made a mini-rolodex of stamps featuring Tim Holtz! I love his creative style, and look forward to eventually getting a copy of his book "A Compendium of Curiosities."

The Artist's Way

There is a book by Julia Cameron I've recently heard about. My friend said it's like a twelve step course for artists. It's a course in discovering and recovering your creative self. In the book, the artist is encouraged to free-journal 3 pages every day. She says not to read back over what you've written for at least 7 months.

Hmm. That would totally be a challenge. Not to read back over what you write? Really? Well, since I can totally relate to some artist buddies' skitzy mental ADD attitude sometimes, I think if they are lovin' the 3 page journalling, I probably would as well. I've not committed to such a thing before.

I should probably just get the book. I'm into creativity.

Donna Downey

Here I am with Donna Downey! She is absolutely amazing!


Here's my favorite page out of the sample album Donna passed around. I got pics of every page, but I'm not sure she wants those shared around unless you get them from her site or at her class. She was so sweet! She said we could take pics of anything at all, and could even touch her hubby's hair! This was funny since she'd said there was a guy at the Atlanta Gift Show who told Bill, "I really like your hair!" Bill said that was kinda weird.



This is the only pic I got with Bill in it, and it's out of focus! Yikes!


Here's some goodies just waiting for me to play!

I'm working on completing the album today. Of course, I may not actually finish it today, but I'm working on it!