Bits and Pieces

The early morning air is humming with the sounds of lawnmowers as neighbors take advantage of the still-under-sixty-degrees weather.   The cats have found a warm spot on my small patio and are stretched out, getting their daily dose of sunshine.  I leave the doors into the house ajar so that they can flee to safety when startled by the bark of the neighbors' dogs.

We've had a lovely weather week, with morning temperatures ranging from the high forties to low fifties.  The humidity is low and it's a pleasure to be outside.  I need to enjoy this break in the weather while it's here; while we've had highs only in the low 80's for the last few days, a warming (or should I say "hotting") trend is on the way, and central Arkansas will be back into more seasonal weather all too soon.

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While I should have been outside more during the wonderful weather,  I've been doing other things, indoors. My stamping buddy and I will host a Stamp Camp on Sept. 16. I designed three cards and cut and packaged materials for twenty of each.  I'm also leading the make and take sessions at two other stamping groups, one on Saturday the 17th and the other on Monday the 19th .  I'm a glutton for punishment, I guess!  While we have several Stamp Camps during a year, I teach only once a year for the other groups.  I usually select September as my teaching months, since it's easy to remember that my responsibilities fall around birthday time.

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I have four wonderful children, three daughters and one son.  Son and two daughters have lived within a few miles of me for many years, while youngest daughter has roamed the world with the U.S. Air Force until her retirement to Nebraska two years ago.  Son has recently accepted an excellent job in a small southeastern Kansas town about 5 hours away.  He and his wife have purchased a lovely older home there, and are in the process of moving their household goods. Daughter-in-law has stayed here to cope with packing and real estate agents and the like, and Son comes back to Arkansas on weekends to help with the heavy stuff.    To their delight, even in a very slow real estate market, their Arkansas home has sold, and they will vacate the premises by month end. I'm looking forward to visiting them in their new digs, but will miss having them close by.

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I marked the milestone of yet another birthday this past week.  My natal anniversary falls on Labor Day every few years, and this was one of them.  The whole nation took a holiday to help me celebrate  Ha ha!  I had a lovely dinner with my children on Sunday night, followed by a quiet Labor Day/Birthday with absolutely no hoop-la --  my kind of day.  I even got in an afternoon nap.  The evening brought a small gathering of my closest friends. One of the ladies also has a September birthday, the day before mine, and we have a joint celebration.  We enjoyed a good visit, exchanged gifts (with the other birthday girl and I on the receiving end of gifts from the others).  We also shared a delicious cake that has become "our" birthday cake.  The cake, called "Summer Fruit Tart," is made by Silvek's European Bakery in Little Rock (look here for a photo of our cake and other delicious treats they prepare), and it's been our birthday treat for the last four or five years.  Birthdays do have some nice things about them.

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When not doing card stuff, I've been reading. Light reading only; I'm not up to material that requires a lot of brain power to digest.  I'm finally comfortable with my Kindle, and have read seven books in the last ten days, four of them, by the same author, in two days. If you're interested, the seven "cozy" books I read were by authors Robert Spiller and Judy Christie, and are listed in "Books Read in 2011" on my sidebar.   Other than tiring my aging eyes a bit, I've thoroughly enjoyed the quietness of entertainment that doesn't require sound. I had been watching far too much television.

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Speaking of TV's -- my Gardening Daughter's husband gifted me with a huge surprise for my birthday, a new-to-me wide screen HD TV!  He's a "latest and greatest" techie and a big time movie buff, and recently acquired one of the 3-D televisions.   Having no room in their home for another wide-screen TV, something had to go, and the sweet boy was kind enough to replace my old, beginning-to-get-fuzzy television..  The television set that used to be in their living room is now in my living room.  I'm still getting used to being able to read all the fine print on the commercials!  Gardening Daughter assures me that it was entirely his idea to pass the still good-as-new TV on to me, and he delivered and set up the unit (and a new DVD player) while I was away from home for a day.

Guess that's about it.

Tomorrow is also a day.

Happy Valentine's Day

You can tell it's been several years since I made this greeting card, because the postage stamp I used as the focal image was, at the time, current postage.  I made this in a rubber stamping class taught by my friend, Sheila.   I sent the original card to my sister in Virginia, but I scanned it before I put it in the mail.

I'm glad I saved the image because, as I perused my Picasa files for 'heart-y' things, I thought this one would do quite well to convey my Valentine's Day greetings to my blog readers.

Pretend you got one just like this in the mail today.  You will cherish it, of course, and for a few days display it proudly on your mantel, or on the highly polished table next to your favorite chair; some prominent place where you can see it and feel all warm and fuzzy inside because that woman in Arkansas thinks you're SPECIAL!

The card pictured above is probably a more appropriate greeting for the general reader than the one I posted a few weeks ago, "Bosom Buddy."  But, if you'd rather be my bosom buddy, you can pretend you got that one in the mail.

I hope you are looking forward to, having, or had a wonderful day.  I will work in the church office this morning, and this afternoon I will babysit my six year old granddaughter. Perhaps we'll make Valentines for her parents and sisters and eat a few pieces of chocolate candy.

Tomorrow is also a day.

Where, Oh, Where is My Roll of Ribbon?

This knot of ribbon, which is, in real life, only 2" across, is an integral part of the design for a card that is to be made at the Christmas "Stamp-a-Stack" I'm co-hosting on November 13 and November 14. I need to make 160, yes, one hundred sixty, of these knots, ready to apply to the cards. However, I have a problem!

When I left to go to Virginia, a full roll of this polka-dot ribbon (the only one I had in my stash), was on my stamping table. Safe enough, I thought. But, oh, no! Sometime during my absence, the entire roll of ribbon disappeared. I spent the better part of a day looking for it. I've cleared everything from the stamp table, piece by piece, looked on the floor and under cabinets, moved boxes and bags and so on and so on. I've looked under the kitchen table, in the living room under the sofa, under the chairs, under my bed. No ribbon!

I suspect that one or more of the cats, trying to get even for my prolonged absence, knocked the roll of ribbon off the table and batted it around to who knows where! Missy, my black mama cat, has been known to carry entire rolls of ribbon from the stamp room into other parts of the house, but I've always spotted them in plain view. The culprit might even have pushed the roll off the table into the large trash bin that I keep nearby, and which Gardening Daughter thoughtfully emptied during my absence. (Note to self: move trash bin to another location.) If that's the case, my brand new roll of ribbon is now residing under a pile of yuck at Mount Trashmore, the local landfill.

All is not lost -- except the time I've spent looking for it, and even that had a benefit: my stamping table and environs are neater than they've been for some time. My stamping partner and co-host of the Stamp-a-Stack has some of this particular ribbon on hand which I can use for the project, since I don't have time to order and receive it in time to prepare for the stamping event. I'll just have to order two rolls, one for me and one to replace the one I will "borrow."

Off now to cut paper and create kits for the other cards -- which fortunately don't require red polka-dot ribbon.

More, later.

Home Again, Home Again

Northern Virginia Countryside

I've been away for a couple of weeks, visiting my sister and her husband, who live just outside Washington, D.C., in northern Virginia. I don't get up there very often; my last trip was about two years ago. I usually go alone, and drive the almost 1,000 miles each way; it's a long and physically taxing trip, but I very much enjoy the scenery through Tennessee and Virginia.

This time, I was afforded the luxury of flying, courtesy of my brother-in-law, and the trip took just over 6 hours. Airline routes being what they are, I had to fly from Little Rock to Houston, then Houston to Washington, D.C.

While Arkansas was experiencing downpours (October, 2009, was the wettest October on record, with over 16" of rain during the month), there were only light showers in Virginia -- just enough to prevent us from getting out and enjoying the fall scenery -- until the last day of my visit, when the sun came out and things dried out enough to let us to go out to lunch at my sister's favorite restaurant, Heart in Hand, in Clifton, VA, and for a short drive in the surrounding countryside, where I took the photo shown above.

The area around Clifton is "horse country" and there are literally hundreds of miles of fence similar to the one shown in the photo above. There's some serious money in "them thar hills!"

I think my cats were glad to see me come home; I can't sit down without having one cat in my lap and another yowling around my ankles. I was glad to see them, too.

More, later.

P.S. The Kairos card count is now almost 1,400. The ladies have been busy since I've been away.

Kairos Card Count, So Far

Friend "B" has used her time as a volunteer in the church office to put Kairos cards and envelopes together. As of this morning, there are 1,031 cards! Yay!

There will be some more to add to that group before the card-making is done. We may have to rent a U-Haul to get them all there! (just kidding, but they will fill a large box.)

Our minister is delighted with the results of our card-making efforts, and the ladies of the church who assisted feel the effort was well worth-while.

More, later.

Coming Up for Air

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, I've just been busy. Really, really busy!

Card-Making Activities

The card-making frenzy is over -- for a while, at least. In an earlier post, I mentioned the Kairos Prison Ministry. Last Friday evening, in our church's Parish Hall, nine other women and I produced almost 900 Christmas cards. That's nine hundred, folks! All these cards will be taken to one of the state's prisons, Tucker Correctional Facility, where they will be made available to the inmates to send to their families during the holiday season.

We ran out of envelopes at 796 cards, so had a bit of shopping to do. One of the church office volunteers will finish putting envelopes with cards this week. I suspect that we'll have more than 900 cards when the final count is done.

My friend "B" and I furnished all the supplies and materials for this effort, so we had a LOT of paper cutting and folding to do, but it was worth it.

The volunteers who joined us in this effort said they had a great time, and are interested in making another huge batch of cards (Easter, birthday, all-occasion) in the spring of 2010. We'll make "stampers" out of them, yet!

Just Stuff

Back to Earth!

Hot Air Balloon Ride

Should you be wondering why I haven't posted again about my marvelous hot air balloon ride, it's coming, it's coming! Sorting through and choosing the best of several hundred photos is taking time, and I do want my tale to have some sort of order to it. My fellow passenger is sending me a CD of the photos she took, BalloonLR is sending a CD with photos taken from the ground by the Chaser and, with their permission, I may include some of those in my post.

 Greeting Cards
I'm not working on much of anything EXCEPT cards! Our World Card Making Day event was a success, with 16 ladies creating 240 cards. As I've stated in a previous post, half the cards are going to the Little Rock Ronald McDonald House, and half will be sent to Cards for Soldiers. Below are photos of two of the cards we created during this event.


As if that were not enough, one of my church friends and I have organized a project to create Christmas cards for the inmates of one of Arkansas' prisons. Several members of our church are actively engaged in the "Kairos Prison Ministry" there. Our priest told us of a need for cards for the inmates to send to their families and several ladies have risen to the challenge. We'll be making Christmas cards next week -- several hundred if we work it right.

Why Have All the Birds Gone? 
All summer long, my yard was filled with birds: four or five families of cardinals ; a plethora of squawking blue jays; grackles by the dozen; lots of sparrows of different sorts; some randomly visiting chickadees and nuthatches; a family of hummingbirds. I filled my feeders at least twice a day and spent hours watching them. On the first day of Autumn, except for the hummingbirds, the majority of them disappeared, leaving only a few stalwart hangers-on. I've seen only one blue jay in the last three weeks, and not a single grackle. Even the squirrels have deserted me. I suspected that the neighbor's cat, lurking under the trees, had scared them off. I shooed her out of the yard every time I saw her (Maggie's a nice cat, but I don't want her around my birds).

Maggie may be playing a part in their absence, but something else is scaring them off, and today I saw the culprit! A large hawk swooped through the yard and perched in the branches of one of my trees not far from the feeders. I've never before seen a hawk in this neighborhood, much less my own yard! Of course I ran to get my camera but was not quick enough. Just as I was focusing the telephoto lens, off it went!

I watched for quite some time, and finally a brave little nuthatch visited the feeder, soon followed by two cardinal pairs. The hawk must have been long gone for them to come out of hiding. Fortunately, all my trees are still fully leafed, so there are hiding places for them.

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More, later.

What I've Been Up To Lately

Besides yardening, that is. Making greeting cards; attending parties; posting to another blog.

Read all about it here. (long article about rubber stamping activities, with photos)

Yes, the cake was delicious!

Post Publication Clarification: I did NOT make this cake!
RSVP is the rubber stamp group to which I belong. We observed our tenth anniversary as a group last Saturday.

It's Stamp Camp Time, Again - Post 61

Yes, I really am thinking of you!

I'm up to my eyeballs in card-making stuff, again, so postings and visits to others' blogs may go begging for a bit. My stamping partner and I are hosting a Stamp Camp for 20 ladies this coming Saturday afternoon. I've been making sample cards, writing instructions, measuring and cutting card stock and decorative papers and otherwise getting my share of things prepared for our attendees. Our theme for this session is "Think Pink" and all of our cards (six of them) have the color pink in them. Some are predominately pink while others, like the one above, has a pink focal point.

It was a good day to be inside doing stuff like this, because outside was sort of yucky! I was awakened during the night by thunder which shook the window panes, followed by the sound of rain, which promptly lulled me back to sleep. It's been raining steadily all day, and we're supposed to have thunderstorms and 40% to 60% probability of rain through the weekend.

I thought it was still "tonight" but I see from looking at the clock that it's already "tomorrow," so it's off to bed with me.

I'll be back, soon.