Le Sigh

I think we can all agree that 2016 beat the hell out of us.  I'm exhausted 24/7.  I wake up tired, I'm always tired, I don't want to do anything or go anywhere.  Getting motivated takes an inordinate amount of energy that I just don't have.  

The house is decorated though.  That took a couple of days.

I love to do Christmas art, can you tell?

I had to send my beloved Pepper over the Rainbow Bridge on December 1st which was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.  I am so grateful Russell was there for me those first few days.  I was a mess.  I miss her so much and I still start crying real easily....like now.  Marsha gave me this ornament last year.  Best doggie ever.  

Anywho...I'm really sorry I haven't made the blog rounds the past couple of weeks.  I just haven't had the energy or attention span.  Seriously feel like I've gone the full 15 rounds with 2016.  Trying to snap out of this funk and salvage the last couple weeks of the year!

Christmas' Last Gasp & Happy New Year!

The last of the Christmas pics.  I just love how the outside lights look in the rain.  Since I was planning on taking everything down between Christmas and New Years, I had to take the opportunity to shoot them.

These two were through the kitchen window.

We had the kids over for Christmas Day and we did munchies and deli sandwiches.  I also baked up some Italian knot cookies and I was dying to try these brownie trees.  They came out pretty good!

I should've taken a pic of the table with all the food on it but I was so busy putting everything out and everyone was digging in so all I got was a pre-visit picture of the Christmas crackers, cards and scratch tickets.  No one but me ever heard of crackers before, but they seemed to enjoy them, and we all wore our paper crowns the rest of the day.

Later that night, I went back outside to take a couple of pics of my neighbour's laser lights up in the trees.

This is with the brightness boosted quite a bit, as it was roughly 8:00 pm when I took them.

Another house down the street had them as well.

Couple more pics of the kitchen window.

I hope everyone has a happy and safe New Years Eve!  I always attempt to stay up for the ball dropping in New York but the past couple of years we were well on our way to sleepydreamland by 11 pm.  Gone are the days of all night Dead shows at the Oakland Coliseum! 

Happy New Year!

Date Night Downtown

Every holiday season I make it a point to watch 'Moonstruck', which then makes me crave Italian food.  There is a restaurant here in town called Mezza Luna, and it's been there since I think the 1930s.  I went a few times with my family as a kid.  Several years ago it burned down but the family rebuilt.  Despite living here for over 4 years, we never went (except for the Paint Night I did in March).  I told Russell I was dying for good Italian food, so we went on Dec. 23rd.  

The decorations inside were absolutely GORGEOUS.

The food was amazing.  We got fried mozzarella to start off and it was to die for, esp. the marinara. The salads were even outstanding, as was the bread.  Russell got prime rib and he could practically cut it with his fork.  My stuffed shells in meat sauce were deeeeelicious.  We are hoping to go again tonight or tomorrow!!!!

This is the street side of the restaurant.  How gorgeous!

Since we were already out and on Main Street, I asked him to take me down to the park so I could get a few snaps.  The town decided that they were not going to put the lights and scenes at the 2 rotaries at either end of town, but they at least put up stuff in the park.  It was raining and I had no tripod with me.

This was new....and I have to say he looks a bit psycho.  Or angry.  Or both.

 If you ever find yourselves in Buzzards Bay, a stop at Mezza Luna is an absolute MUST.

More Holiday Crafting

Well I was going at a healthy clip, making projects that I'd seen on Pinterest and wanted to tackle, but then everything in my life went sideways through no fault of my own, and I ended the month of November really sick which was not surprising considering the way I was run ragged and right into the ground.

But I did manage to get this one completed and I'm really pleased with it.  I got the shadow box at AC Moore.  It had some text on the back that I don't even remember and I covered it with silver glitter paper.  Next, I had to drill the hole for the battery operated LED lights, then pulled them through but left them outside till I finished with the tree scenes.  I used some styrafoam chunks to elevate the trees and then glued the other trees in place.  That took a day or so to dry.  After that I ran the lights around it.  The project that I was using as a guide had the wires showing like this and actually I kind of like the effect.  Once the lights were in place, I stuffed some cotton snow in the bottom, then used gold glitter paint around the edges (hard to see in this pic).  The sad thing is, I have no room for it but I'm going to try and find a place. 

And then I finished experimenting with a bunch of ornament ideas seen on Pinterest, just to check them off my craft bucket list.  I ended up giving all of them to my stepdaughter.  No idea what she's doing with them....but I don't have the room for them so better her than me!  lol

Stuffed with colourful pom poms.

This one was a disaster.  Supposed to be easy....pour in nail polish then swipe around the sides with a Qtip.  Well I used more polish than I should have so it got everywhere.  I had to let it drain in the trash for about 15 minutes before attempt the Qtip part.  I had polish all over my fingers for days.

The project I saw for this just had pearl beads in it but that looked really bad so I used a long strand of pearls I found buried in my ribbons container.

Same thing with this strand of red.

This is kind of pretty....just some fibers and stuff.

This one is stuffed with iridescent fibers.

Another pain in the butt.  I was going to just stuff the whole thing with that snow stuff but thanks to static electricity, it was hard to fill and hard to keep from sticking to my hands, shirt and basically everything in site.  So I threw a bunch of little holiday bits and bobs into it and made a 'spot the item' ball instead.

This is an interesting effect.  It's supposed to be like mercury glass.  You spray some mirror paint inside and swirl it around, hit it with a hair dryer to partially dry it, then put a drop or two of water inside and shake the ball to spatter it on the sides.  

Finally, glow in the dark paint.  I never fully charged it to shoot a pic after it was glowing.  I assume it worked.

Right now my craft table is a hot mess but I'm hoping to get a few more altered art projects done.