Category Archives: ATC

Feb18

So far, 3rd snowiest winter ever

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I’ve been hanging low watching the 58.4″ of snow pile up over the last few months. I can’t do any shoveling, not with my back. The guys have done their share, but they have a snow blower this time around too.

snow14

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I’ve taken at least 20 Instagram photos featuring the weather and snow.

I did a cupid theme for Valentine’s Day on my mantel

MantelVDay

Sean gave me the ‘Love’ print (in Philly) and I got to see it in person at the end of December.

I have been doing a lot of sorting-yarn, fabric, craft items, etc and it’s still a work in progress, but it’s spread all over the house right now. I really have to downsize more.

I’ve knitted a few hats too! One of which is ‘almost’ in the colors of the Geocaching logo. I made it too big at first, ripped out about 5 rows and did a little crocheting and gathering at the top. I added a pin I had and wore it geocaching on Monday in Dover, DE.

Geohat

I’m working on a cowl right now. I had pretty old knitting needles and bought some new ones and what a difference!

We all were trying to think of a local place to take a day trip yesterday. We were going up to Allentown to see a car museum and maybe the art museum, but it was a holiday and a Monday. so they were closed.  We took a drive to Dover, DE which is about 60 miles one way. I am trying to get to 500 geocache finds, but this winter it’s slow going.

Our first spot was Pickering Beach.  A few of us had to go to the bathroom and the little cottages were locked up tight. I completely forgot there were caches there, but the GPS was out anyway. I usually am very thorough with our trips to do caching, but I was aiming for Allentown, not Dover. I did notice there were several DGT (Delaware Geocache Trails) ones and we did find one when we could get to it. It was at a brewing company! I had brought a little beer mug trophy to add to the swag. When I ordered them, I thought they were much smaller. So glad to find an appropriate place to add one.

The other places, all museums were closed. We plan to go back in May to see them all. The beach should be crawling with horseshoe crabs from the Delaware Bay.

PickeringB

PickeringB2

We did find 5 geocaches, but not the neat ones at the John Dickerson Plantation and airplane museums as the gates were closed at these locations.

I’ve only worked 2 days for the entire month of February because of the weather. The kids all have cabin fever and get a bit itchy.

Some things are going on like the orchid show at Longwood Gardens and the Flower show in Philly. Hope to get to Longwood in the next few weeks.

And last but not least, some Artist trading cards were made much to my enjoyment! It’s been a while, though I made 13 Valentine’s Day cards for the kids.

Feb14

Show a little Love today

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I heard that Valentine’s Day was an invented holiday, but so were Mother and Father’s Days. It is a nice distraction during the gloomy winter months. I love hearts, cupids and chocolate!

I made the kids at the preschool a little collage card too.

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I  need to thank my Flickr pal-here’s her page

There’s a new movie called ‘Safe Haven’ and the funny thing is, I was writing a little story back in 2011 about my Grandmom and growing up that I called ‘Sheltering Haven’. Here’s a portion of the little I did write.

     My grandmother Ruth was a sheltering haven to me for most of my life and I didn’t even realize it until she passed away. When she died, something in my subconscious was brought up to the surface from my memory bank and what was old became quite new and fresh in my mind again. Perhaps these memories were meant to be buried all that time as when I remembered them, I felt new love and appreciation for my ‘mom-mom’. A few things; not everyone gets to live with their grandmother or will get a much older person’s point of view about things. But more than that, she was there not only to fill a void where a father should have been, but to be someone we could count on when we needed advice, a hot meal or maybe a ‘talking to’. 

So:

“Shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel….. (JT)

Have a lovely day of love! ❤

Nov3

Yes, these are new collages!

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I need to live up to my blog name. I have worked on these for a week or so. Some aren’t even finished, but I thought I’d share. I like the lady with guitar a lot.

I’m trying to utilize rubber stamps that I have a ton of too.

Photo Hunt–Seasonal

This was taken last year at Longwood Gardens in mid November-

Look at all the leaves on the tree then!

Bright yellow leaves

My father-in-law got his power back after 4 long days. On Tuesday we had called PECO and they said it would be until 11 pm Friday. We found a hotel room for him right away and Brian went over to take him to the room. He wouldn’t budge out of the house. 4 people and two policeman could not make him move out of his cold, dark house, so there he stayed with a dying cellphone. Talk about stubborn. Brian will have to make him promise if something like this happens again, he will heed to his wishes of being safe in a warm room. The man is 89 years old and a bit frail. This made us all stressed out and tense all that time. I would never do that to Sean.

Jul23

Nasturtiums starting to bloom

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Hey Zoey! I’m not sure if these are the nasturtiums you sent me a few months back, but they may be close. I don’t think yours have the color inside. These are pretty though.

I’m doing a few Artist trading cards today as it’s so blazing hot and I’m tired from not sleeping well as I am getting hot flashes as soon as I lay my weary head on the pillow. I was asked to make a few ATCs for a Flickr group, so I thought, why not?  I’ll share soon.

Jun3

Some challenges for Swap-bot

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I’ve been hosting challenges over at Swap-bot for about a month. I’m going with the alphabet and working up…Animal Anomaly, Babies and Baubles, Cooking Capers, Daydreaming, Elephant Enigma and the 4th of July…..so far.

Here are a few I’m made lately…

Animal Anamoly

Babies and Baubles (my grandmom called babies, ‘Baby Birds’)

Cooking Capers-photocopy from an old kid’s book-so cute! We have a brown bunny hanging around the yard this year too! : )

 Daydreaming

Elephant Enigma

I did the 4th of July one before I put up the challenge. It’s from a M.E. tear off calendar page:

Cute Cupcake

Geisha Girl

So I’ve been having fun being creative with paper.

I did the grouting on the glass mosaics. Some were sunk in the adhesive more than I would have liked and some got crooked. I even saw a chip in one! This section is hidden a lot, but it’s nice because it’s like a backdrop for the vessel sink. I really love the look. It’s great for the guys to shave with!

May18

Photo Hunt-Magical

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Long shot of rose garden, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

Brian, Sean and me took my mom back to the Scott Arboretum on the campus of Swarthmore College (Penna). to see their spectacular and magical Bond rose garden.
From a website-
Yet by far the crowning jewel in this already impressive collection is the shockingly gorgeous Dean Bond Rose Garden. Housing 650 roses of more than 200 types, it was established in memorial of Elizabeth Powell Bond, the Dean of Women at Swarthmore. It’s now tradition for graduating seniors of the college to pin a rose on their gown for commencement.
We’re going back in a few weeks to see them in further bloom!

Here’s an Artist Trading card I made and had to keep, but I did make a similar one to send my swap partner. My Grandmom Ruth use to call babies ‘baby birds’ so this reminds me of her.

The one I sent my partner:

May14

May Blooms and Victorian Flower Swap

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This is the front little walking path under my very tall, messy, shedding and kind of half ugly evergreen tree.  I am wishing it wasn’t there anymore to tell you the truth as it was allowed to get too big. I guess I’ll have to live with  it for a while.

I still get some lovely irises coming up, but I think many aren’t blooming as they need to be separated. I’ve done it before and it’s not an easy task. I know there’s about 15 varieties hiding in that garden.

Brian dug up another round garden, which I may have mentioned and recycled some old plastic fencing. He’s not sure how sturdy it will be, but hopefully it will do it’s job of keeping critters at bay.

I really like the Victorian cards I sent off. The hostess was inspired by old seed packs, and I found some cute images on a Flickr group. I hope the people I sent these to aren’t expecting seed packets, because that wouldn’t be original.

Back to gardening… I have lots of seeds to put in soon. Of course we are expecting rain and I may be delayed. That will give me time to figure out what goes where. I want to try pumpkins and watermelon this year. I have plenty of room for them.

May5

A new collection

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Right before our anniversary last month, I was in a gift shop browsing around. They happen to have a 25% off sale on Vera Bradley quilted items. I know they’ve been around a number of years, but lately I’ve been eyeing up their smaller bags as I just can’t handle a big purse anymore. Sometimes I’ll take two purses on trips, the big one with all the cosmetics, etc and the little one to use for shopping. So I saw the chartreuse, black, gray and white one and decided to get it. I love it and it’s little compartments for my phone and wallet…well I didn’t have the wallet until I found it on eBay! I also got the other ones-they all have names-I know the red one has Scarlett in there.  I’m waiting on an eyeglass case for eBay.

They were a fraction of the price of the ones in the store and they were new with tags! The little one in the front has my MP3 player in it and I’ve had it a few years.

That’s my back massage chair. And they are all machine washable. I have enough right now, but I like the backpacks, but they are up there in price.

Made this ATC for a ‘feather’ challenge. I happen to have an old rip off calendar and Elizabeth Denison was intriguing to me. She had to ‘make do’ with accessories, and she used feathers! Another swap bot lady sent me the sweet little feathers as she saw on Swap-bot I was in that challenge and she was sending me a ATC also.

I got two ‘gadgets’ in the mail yesterday. First an ‘extender’ so our WiFi could get to the bedroom part of the house. It took a bit to set up as the software wouldn’t work right. I had to get my laptop to find the device and it did. I can use my iPad in the bedroom-look at movies in bed, i.e.. The second was the Magellan eXplorer device. I had to become a premium member of Geocaching.com and I think my phone app is easier to read. Plus I had to go download local caches from the website. The phone app finds them for you! I think I’ll have to try it to get use to it, but I’ll need my glasses on as the screen is a bit tiny. If my pal Carole can find around 150 with hers, I hope to find at least 10 to begin with.

And some of my gardens are shaping up nicely. So many weeds to contend with!  I did a lot of work on Friday and did a bit more today, but I was very achy. I moved some ferns from the fairy garden and dug up Lily of the Valley slips. They are taking over! They bloomed so early, I didn’t get to enjoy their scent that long.

Check out this gorgeous petunia hanging basket. It has Pink Lemonade and Picasso petunias in it  and  is close to 3 feet wide. It was $22-around here-easily $35.

Below there is a Mt St. Helen’s Azalea which is new. Brian cut down the one hedge and I think we’ll gradually cut out the rest as they are old and are more brown than green.

I really am not going to garden on Sunday, but we will have something on the grill. I cooked last night, but couldn’t tonight.

Apr30

Some more flowery ATCs and things

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If you catch my blog and voted for me for my contest piece, thank you! I haven’t checked, but I think I’m in 4-5th place out of 18. I showed this piece in about 4 different places and I got about 21 votes. I said to Sean 20 would be nice and since one was my own-I got 20!

Anyway, Brian and I took a walk in the park. We tried to find the cache there that we couldn’t find about 2-3 weeks ago and now there are 2 feet weeds and poison ivy coming up. We couldn’t find it. I then saw there was a good size one near our township building and in under 10 minutes, we found it!

Right under the azalea bush there-lol

We drove near here and just couldn’t find where three were-we didn’t get out of the car for two. I am getting a little nervous about ticks now, so I’ll have to really start pinning my hair up and wearing lighter colors of clothing. I did take all that outfit off when I got home and brushed my hair well.

Here are some art pieces I made recently

My Groovy ATC

That’s me and I’m pretty sure I was hula hooping.

This was to have a Vintage theme. I made a copy of an inside cover of an old book of mine that’s about 100 years old for the background there. The oval is from an old book. The  ‘creating charm’ is from a store bag that had old advertising stuff on it.

I originally made this for the trade. Can you see the Viewfinder slide and the 8 ball? Then I added a sticky flower stencil I added glitter too. Too cool.