Jan12

Fun with paper collaging

Posted on by
Standard

I really did enjoy making these last few cards. A contact on Flickr said I could use some of her vintage photos and they helped to spark my imagination. Not sure if this is Gabi’s, but I can surely double check to give her credit. I found a new page of doors on another group and printed them out. I should have fun with the rest of them. Flickr just isn’t a photo hosting site, there are groups there also-you think of it-there is a group! Table-scaping, Elvis, (probably) etc. It’s free to join and you get quite a bit of storage space that’s free. I’m using Flickr to blog this entry.
I have hearts and Valentine’s Day on my mind and came up with this-I know she is Gabi’s lady.
Celebration of the Heart
I got a pretty ‘C’ rubber stamp and did the background on the next one. The little girl is playing with a hoop which is a circle. I was thinking of the Joni Mitchell song ‘The Circle Game’ too.
Circle Game Collage a Day 4" x 4" Card
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The snow is here and Sean had to stay until the very end of the evening. He doesn’t remember driving at night in the snow and was holding his breath until he got home. Hopefully it will get cleaned up before both he and his dad have to venture out.

Jan11

I wanted to do a 1-11-11 post

Posted on by
Standard

We are waiting on some snow later this afternoon. The weathermen just can’t seem to get it right with amounts, etc., but it’s cold enough and dreary.
We are a bit down in the mouth around here. Sean didn’t get the job he went on an interview for last Tuesday. There were 39 other people for a rather specialized job and it was entry level to boot. He has a new connection for another place, but the lady said they aren’t hiring. This is hard to hear for Sean after 1.5 years of looking.
We’ve had issues with our bathroom sinks-we have one on the first floor and one in the basement. After the terrible rains we had back in the early fall, the sinks drain like they are draining super thick molasses. Drain*o does nothing. I think there is a clog in the ‘elbow’ area upstairs that Brian doesn’t seem to want to tackle. After a few cups of water it backs up. He decided to use the plunger and made it worse. Everything gross sitting on top of the clog came up in the sink-ugha ugha!
One good thing, we got the funds to start looking for a replacement vehicle. I think we’ll have to finance some of it, but I want Bri to use the newer vehicle at least 3 days a week since his car has over 124k miles on it. He had trouble with his car stalling yesterday and he needed antifreeze. I hope that’s all. It’s not good not having a ‘second’ car (though Sean has a car, but he needs his for work too).
Trying to think positively and hoping for the best. Only time will tell.
Guess I’ll get the rest of my Christmas stuff put away.

Jan10

Collages galore!

Posted on by
Standard

I finished up three more collages, but didn’t do the one for the 9th as I wanted to do a bit of cross stitching on an older project which I did while watching the special on TLC about the royal weddings.
I wanted this to be a travel collage and I ran across this sticker with a quote by former Monty Python player Michael Palin. He was my favorite in that group and my mom said he looks like her dad. I had pulled the map out to use and saw that it had Sudbury on it where my blogger pal Carole lives! I found a photo of Michael pointing to a globe-not the best, but fit the card. Not sure why my printer has line issues through some dark photos.
Then I was looking through a bag of die-cuts I got at that cool scrapbooking store in Bucks County and ran across the copy of this advertising-have no idea what it’s for. Made him a bell hop:
At Your Service 4" x 4" Collage Card
I printed out a group of Winslow paintings I had gotten as freebies from Dover Pubs. I just embellished it a little:
Tending flowers 4" x 4" Collage Card
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Going to get my hair done later, go to Trader Joe’s and then hope to get my mom out for a nice dinner. She is still having some issues that she may have to get help with resolving. Something is not right.
It’s suppose to snow tomorrow. Good day to get the rest of the decorations packed-I did so well on Saturday, I just need another hour to get the rest done and organized.

Jan9

Sad news about a former Chesco’s family member

Posted on by
Standard

When I got on Facebook this morning my news link said that the 9-year old girl what was killed when Congresswoman Gabby Griffins was shot was the granddaughter of former Phillies baseball manager Dallas Green. Her name was Christina Green and she was also born on Sept. 11, 2001 to make this a sadder event. Dallas lived a few towns over in West Grove but my friend John thinks he moved to Rising Sun, Md. about 1/2 hour away. Dallas is definitely a local hero and his baseball shirt even hung in the local Applebee’s at one time.
Saying prayers for the family.

Jan8

Backing up of collage shares

Posted on by
Standard

Happy Birthday to my youngest brother Ken!

I just realized I have about 6 collages, mostly finished to share. I only photographed half of them so here we go!
I cut this ‘moon’ couple out to use on an ATC, then decided to go with something else and played around with it until I came up with this-kinda weird, kinda whimsical. You know the cow jumps over the moon, correct?
I also had pulled the little girls and teens with those funny hats on for a celebration card and went with the two babies with party hats I applied last week. I called this ‘party time hats’ for obvious reasons.
Party hat time! 4" x 4" Collage card
I had the sweet little ‘angel’ girls pulled and decided to see what the St. Luke verse was-it’s about the angels bringing glad tidings to earth, so it fit. The verse was scanned from a book I have thats probably over 80 years old.
St. Luke-Angels 4" x 4" Collage card
I’ll finish up the other collages to share soon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We took down the Christmas tree today. : (
It was a good day to do so as we had intermediate snow off and on all day, but not much of an accumulation. I have a handful of ornaments to tuck in some box and I need to locate the bag for the stockings, but I did well with some help from Brian. I’m suffering from a sore lower back, mostly in the morning. I think I pulled it exercising-the one you walk your fanny across the floor-don’t do that on if you are over 50! LOL I wore my tummy buster belt which seemed to help. I think all that walking in the cold and climbing all the steps we did in various parts of the gardens made my aches ‘come alive’ again. No gain without pain. And then we ate a McD’s angus burger! I had to add mustard and relish to mine as it was so dry.
Hope to get to church tomorrow morning-not good on Sunday mornings sometimes.

Jan7

Longwood Christmas Display 2010

Posted on by
Standard

~Click here to enlarge~
It was very chilly (below freezing) day today, but Sean and I headed over to Longwood Gardens as we were gifted with tickets and the display is closing on Sunday. There were some very imaginative decorations. I really liked the tree with the moss, dried roses, silver painted ferns and pine cones that were cut in half (photos #3-thinking Ms. Zoey would like that too!)The tent was interesting-the 5th photo. It displayed a collection of perfume bottles inside and there were at least a dozen bonquets of white florals around it plus lit evergreens.

I also wanted to see the gardens with an icing of snow, I don’t remember seeing more than just a dusting of snow there before. Very pretty. We also go for the lights which were just as amazing, but difficult to photograph at night. We went up in one of the newer treehouses called ‘the birdhouse’ and that was 3 flights of stairs-oy! Nice view of the Dupont house.

Another new area was the hall of bathrooms-I kid you not-with about 20 large individual bathrooms. The walls of the hall are lined with living plants (first photo).

We ate a sandwich and mushroom soup in the cafe. I had an eggplant one which was cold-would have been tastier kept warm. The mushroom soup tasted good and warmed us up. It took me a good 45 minutes to warm up when we got home.

More snow expected tomorrow.

Jan5

An ‘ode’ to Winnie the van

Posted on by
Standard

I was really excited to get this van back in February,1999. We had gone to a local dealership and were looking around the lot, and there she was. I think they had just had her traded in. We went across the street to the medical center and I got in behind the wheel. Right away I liked her because I sat up high which will now be a buying factor in future vehicles. We bought her and I’ll always remember Brian saying ‘Can you do better than that?’ about a dozen times. It took 2 years to pay the balance. It was really too large a vehicle for a family of 3, but could we pack her up on trips to the beach and fill her up on shopping excursions (not that many excursions). She was good for furniture hauling too. Poor Sean needs a new fold up bed and hasn’t been able to get one since we were told not to drive her that far. Speaking of Sean, he was 12 when we got her and learned to drive with her and drove her a lot. And I loved the tinted windows in the back too.
She had a few issues over the years. Within 3 months she needed a new transmission. She had a funny creaking noise when you turned the wheel to the left-for years! Finally got that fixed. The a/c needed charging all the time. I hope whoever buys her will fix her up and enjoy her! She only had about 97k on her for a 15 year old van. Thanks for the ride old girl!
She was towed away about 11:30 pm last night.
Photo taken from a window in a lighthouse in Absecon, NJ.

Jan4

Making more collages

Posted on by
Standard

I’m amazingly only a few cards behind. Not bad for a project I started back at the end of August, 2010. I think I’m up to #128 now. I had to stop and make an Artist Trading Card for a New Year/Father Time challenge and was having a little trouble with that, but think I know how I’ll finish it.
The kitty was from my old 2010 calendar. Along the bottom of each month were kitties the perfect size for these 4″ x 4″ collages. The daisies are new and I used some ‘handmade paper’ along the bottom.
The next one for the 1st was a bit of a challenge because I was wondering what to do with the leaf paper. I had the little metal frame kicking around forever and then the little girl in her furry coat seemed to fit well:
Cherish 4" x 4" Collage Card
The next one is my mom in the early 1950s all dolled up for church or a wedding.
Fancy dresser 4" x 4" Collage Card
I think about her as an 80 yr old who is having a rough time right now (you know who if you read my blog). I wish she wouldn’t listen to this person.

~~~Wish Sean luck as he has an interview at an environmental job that is related to his field-finally! He spoke to the president in early December and the phone call went well, though Sean is talking with someone else tomorrow. We saw that the president took the same exact majors that Sean took!~~~

I was looking at auto*traders.com and found a few cars I’m interested in-white and blue. We’ll get the ball rolling soon.