Flashback Friday

Cousin Antoinette holding the dog, her mom Aunt Teresa, Aunt Anna with her mom/my great grandmother Fannie and brothers, my Uncles Dick & Charlie (note Charlie's black eye!).  Fannie's 2 youngest children are in front, my Aunt Louise & Uncle Johnny.  Photo taken approximately 1925 or 26.  Fannie had a total of 8 kids, and my grandmother Mary and Aunts Celia & Lee are not in this photo.

Happy Thanksgiving and Chanukah

Goody Bags!!!

One of my friends gave me a baggie of old jewelry she didn't want.  When she first told me that she was giving it to me, I pictured like a sandwich-size bag with a couple of broken necklaces, maybe some costume jewelry.  Needless to say I was pretty stunned to get a rather large & heavy bag full of stuff.  

 I poured some of it out on the table...so much great stuff!!!

There's bone

Stone

Bangles

Kitsch

Crescents, charms and coins

Wood

Crystals

Costume

Beads of all kinds

HELLO!

I was surprised to find a box of shells & sand dollars that my pal Karen sent me!  She went to Sanibel Island last winter and brought them back for me.  Along with....

This.  Oh my god.

Yeah, just slightly stoked.

I Will Not Be Bested By Bad Glue & Glitter!

My bff Marsha had a cardiac scare recently, and fortunately is OK because they caught it in time...but she was one sick lady for a few days!  So relieved & grateful that she made it through this crisis!

I'm not religious and identify more with atheism/pagans, but Marsha has very strong faith and if anyone walks the walk, she does.  In fact, she happily and willingly dedicates her life doing for other people, so I'm not at all surprised she got this wake up call to slow down.  I was so worried about her that I burned up nervous energy by walking to town and back two days in a row, one of them being in snow.  I wanted to make Marsha something that resonated with her faith because I know how very grateful she is to be here.  I found a nice silver cross at The Whatchamacallit Shop and decided to try making a snowglobe from a baby food jar.

Last year I didn't have much luck with the snowglobe I made with a Santa figurine, because I used epoxy which stunk so bad that I couldn't even have the snowglobe in the house and it got dismantled after the holidays.  This year I reviewed a quick tutorial, which used a baby food jar.  So I bought a jar of it at the grocery store, gave the contents to Sagan and began to assemble it.  I used two tiny craft pine trees and the silver cross.  I first glued them into place on the jar lid with clear Gorilla glue.  For one thing, it holds really, really well and for another, it foams up so much when it dries that I knew it'd look like snow.  After that dried, I filled the jar with glitter, water & glycerin and glued the cap on with E6000, and waited.  

After a couple of hours, I came out to find green water and all the glitter congealed at the top.

Some of it would swirl but not much.

It looked like mercury.

Green water.  Seriously WTF.  Hardly any of the glitter sunk to the bottom like it's supposed to.

I pondered the fate of this damn project all night and into the next day.   There was nothing else I could do but try and unscrew the lid, drain out the contents and start over.  This meant carefully running a sharp knife tip between the cap and jar, scraping out the E6000, one tiny bit at a time.  I was able to unscrew the lid and clean the whole thing out.  Luckily the trees and cross were still very much glued in place.  

This time I used heavy chunks of glitter, not the fine stuff.  Fresh water and glycerin, and before I put the lid back on, I stirred the crap out of the jar contents to see if the glitter was going to float or sink to the bottom.  Finally, most of it settled on the bottom, so I used gorilla glue to reseal the lid.  And of course, I ended up with it foamed out all over the edge of the cap, and then that  required scraping it off bit by bit with an Xacto knife.  The water is a kind of pale green....not as bad as the first one at all.  And the cross is leaning a little to the left....that's how it dried.  I kind of like it that way. 

Then I headed to my ribbon stash and found a heavy, dark green and gold piece to hid the lid and bits of glue that refused to budge.  My only regret is that I didn't put a little bit more water in it.

Worked MUCH better!!!!

I made this for her too. :)

That 'One Kid'......

Remember back in elementary school there was always that one kid who would foolishly eagerly accept any and all dares by the other kids?  It usually involved the jungle gym, or a tree, roof, bike, etc etc etc and also usually ended badly (think Flick accepting the double dog dare to lick the flag pole).

Over the past few years, my friends post craft projects on my Facebook timeline and because I have the time, I will make a brave attempt to create said projects if I can.  Some of them have ended in fails, others worked out pretty well.

When my stepdaughter posted this to my timeline one day, it occurred to me that I've become, 'that one kid', the one who is happily egged on into more, and now outrageous, craft projects.  

I grabbed my supply of googly eyes and got to work in the refrigerator.

I was just about bursting by the time Russell finally got home that night.  The normal routine when he comes in is that he showers and I finish up cooking dinner, and he comes into the livingroom to relax and I bring him his meal & ice tea.  I knew it'd be awhile before he finally ventured into the kitchen on his own and I was just dying.  So he gets up and when he did, I practically leapt off my chair and followed him, with a huge grin on my face.  It was so enthusiastic that he looked at me and said, 'What was that? Are you following me into the kitchen?'  I don't even know what I stammered out but I didn't dare lay a hand on my camera with him looking me so I didn't get the photo of his face.  

He opened the fridge and his eyes got super wide in surprise as he took in the sight.  Then a perplexed frown crossed his face and he says, 'Why is everything staring at me?'  I busted out laughing.  He looked at me quizzically and I said, 'It was Val's idea! She posted it on my timeline today and I just HAD to do it!  Isn't that a riot?  OMG I have been dying all day!!  I crack up every time I open the fridge!!!'  He shook his head and says, 'She's strange.  You're strange.'  

We're not allowed to play together anymore.  ;-D  (ha ha yeah right!)

The Day After Veteran's Day

As nice as Veteran's Day was, the next day was really cold and raw with freezing rain.  I went to the grocery store first thing and by the time I came out, it was snowing.  Just a tad too soon for me.  I'm not on board with over 4 months of oppressive heat and humidity, 2 months of fall and now winter.

Big flakes fell for quite awhile.  I went to Sandwich the following day and was surprised to see how much more they got over there. 

I'm soooooo not ready for winter.  I want a generator so bad!!!