Obviously not well thought out

A true story - yesterday I went to my friend's house. They have a new puppy. He's kind of a big dog (lab) so they started working with a trainer who taught them to say "Off" when he is jumping or too excited.

So my friend started yelling at the dog when we came in the house, to try to get him under control.

The problem?

The dog's name is Jack.

Just a quickie post

So here's the stamped cards I made as teacher gifts. My daughter is driving me crazy... but that's another story("What are they?" "Note cards." "But what for? My teacher won't understand" - Senora recently became a citizen and I'm pretty SURE she will get the idea! Geeeeez.)

Two variations on background paper. Gold ink and embossing powder (this went from "ugh" to "hey!" when I heated the powder. ) Stamp by Rubber Soul.

Two variations (ran out of brads) on a piece with stamp by Stampin' up. I love this stamp, sometimes I color it in with markers (after I stamp). This picture's blurry because I rushed.

This one I embossed with white powder (stamp by inkadinkado) and that came out great. The background ones were a watermark ink plus distress powder... even though I heated it, it's slowly filtering off. Whoopsie.

This is my favorite, hands down. Stampin' up teddy bear.

I believe this is a stamin' up stamp... I had a complicated mistake when I first started, where I stamped a bear absolutely upside down on the card (it's not oriented the way the sticker on top is! d'oh!) so I cut up that card and turned the bears the right way and so on. This was a leftover scrap. Oy vey. But it's cute with the background paper and brads.

The basket below is also from stampin' up, and the larger flower is a clear stamp by Rhonna Farrer. I used some distress ink and embossing powder on the background flowers because I wanted them light and somewhat scuffed. I'm not exactly sure the products were idea for a stamp with this much detail. It was fun practicing though.

I didn't go all out with these... mostly because I had to make a bunch, and wanted to keep it fairly simple. I have five people (two teachers plus consultant teacher, secretary, principal) so I took a random selection for each one.

White noise is too loud?

So I had a brain flash today, I can make a few stamped notecards as a gift for each teacher. Good excuse to play with my stamps, inks, etc.

Of course my embossing gun is TOO LOUD (think barely a hairdryer...) for the princess, who is now sleeping.

Pictures will be posted when they're done. I basically pulled out a few stamps, I will make 3 or four of each design. Nothing all elaborate and distressed and stuff. A simple embossed image on cardstock, stack that on printed paper, then I'll put it on the card with brads or eyelets.

Stay tuned..

Wasn't I supposed to rush home with my treasures?

Well I got my shopping done today, but not without that precious moment where you want to pick the nearest cash register up, and heave it like a shotput.

Something about waiting in line to purchase something that caught my eye... blah blah store within a store couldn't go to any other register, blah blah blah...waiting an hour...

Anyway, I'm done. Good times.

Quithmuth

"I tan't wait till Quithmuth day" is my favorite goofball Christmas song

Suzy likes "There's something stuck up in the Chimney" ( animated )

What's yours?

(No fair mentioning Dominick!)

All I want for Christmas Is One of Everything

I bought a unmounted "Thank You" block of rubberstamps from Green Grass Stamps. It came in the mail yesterday- awesome.

So I had to figure out this and then, looking at all of THIS page made my head explode. Because I want one of each.

Meaning, of course, that when I go to the craft store tonight (a trip which is only to buy DECOUPAGE GLUE, only, mind you...) I need to BRING CASH ONLY. Because I'm in a shopping sort of mood!!!!!

Don't pester me with that silly technicality of how I'm supposed to be buying gifts for OTHER people right now.

PS: My daughter is stuck today on Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas is You" which is okay (an "urban" radio station here played it notstop to do a fund drive for charity - they wouldn't stop , until they reached their $$ goal, heh...) but I would rather have joined in the choir for something like "Jesus, Oh What A Wonderful Child".

Thump

My day more or less started with a thump. As in, I was sitting at a red light (for at least 10 seconds, long enough to put in my NYS mandated hands free device and dial my phone and say hey to a friend) and this crazy chick literally pulled up behind me and bumped right into my car. Because she didn't SEE me there, or something. I was on the phone with my friend and I literally swore and said "Someone just hit me" and hung up... way to freak out your pals. (Sorry!)

I pulled forward a tiny bit, got out and looked at the bumper and she rolled her window down and said "Sorry" in a "please, I know I'm stupid, don't shoot me or anything" sort of voice, so I let it go. Mind you, this was before we got ANY snow.

I was checking the timecard system today to see how much sick/ vacation time I have left. I have 0.10 hours remaining designated as "sick time." Yes, that is six minutes. Thank you. Just about enough time to go to the bathroom, puke, and GET RIGHT BACK TO WORK. I do have four days of vacation, so all is not lost.

The snow started right around the time that I left work. I left because Suzy is sick. She's got bronchitis and some other goo-type stuff going on. I called to check on her and she mentioned she was out of kleenex and blowing her nose on toilet paper, and THAT JUST WILL NOT DO. Not for my baby sister. (I don't care if she IS 35.) Besides if you keep doing that, you run out of TP and that is NOT good.

Off I went to the store. I called her back just to make sure she didn't need any random embarrasing items (I rattled off a few specific ones) and then went on over, to find her wearing a surgical mask so she wouldn't get me sick. Cute. For Christmas, I gave her a shiny new humidfier to call her very own. She has been coughing so much her ribs are basically reduced to shrapnel, so maybe this will help.

Oh, and the snow. We got our asses kicked today. I have at least 8" of snow here. Blah. People don't know things like "brake OR turn, don't try to do both, dipshit..." so they annoy me. I was behind a tractor trailer from California, and I bet HE was even more pissed off than I was.

Good times.

I'm only saying that

...if Santa were too have a little TOO much hot buttered rum, and point Rudolph in my direction, and if I were to be run over by a reindeer, say, TONIGHT,

...I'm not saying that it would be a bad thing, relative to how the past 32 hours or so have gone.

Volunteering is a great thing. Usually. But sometimes it comes with headaches and leaves one saying "WTF was I thinking? Why did I get myself into this?"

I like to refer to this as "No good deed goes unpunished."

A note

Salmon Run Pinot Noir goes very well with the cookie dough that I mixed the other day and was going to bake Sund, uh, yesterd, um, today...

Bend over

Since I don't feel entertaining, due to things like "Oh my god why didn't she do that?" and "Did I really have to sit through that useless class?" (details not truly important...I'm sure you have your own to fill in the blanks....)

go here.... for more of the artist above (LOVE the Halloween candy one, dated September 13 or so...)

I found it when I ordered gelaskins.

By the way, the light switch covers I pondered recently came and they are beautiful. My Christmas shopping is nearly done. I love you, Internets.

Does anyone want to recommend games for my new blackberry? Aside from Texas Hold'em, of course.

For the Moms

In lieu of my Sunday art posting (oops!) I bring you one of my favorite cartoonists.


This is what the holiday rush feels like sometimes... (Close To Home)

Today I will be enjoying the 2 hour school delay (once the kiddos leave, that is) - I'll be sitting on my couch. There are cookies here.

Technically I'm working from home, but I'm very skilled at cookie /work juggling.

Elf you

I couldn't post yesterday, being overcome by the loss of Carotid Artery Guy. Dammit.


Well, actually I was shopping (shudder). I took the afternoon off from work, studiously avoided the two obscenely large malls in my area, and went to Target and a few other places instead. I am within spitting distance of "done" so I am deeee-lighted. I even had time to have a glass of wine. Oh yeah!


This morning I got up early to upload and order a book I'm making for my dad. Here's a screen of some of the pages. These are pictures of his dad, aunts & uncles, etc. By the way, Shops, I love you, you saved me $55 with that coupon.





Today it's (ugh) decorations everywhere in the house (two trees... Two. I don't want or need two trees. But other people in mi casa insist.)



I'll be making cookies while they do all of that decorating (the kids each get to have one friend over) and I'll be trying not to thing about trying on jeans. Bon appetit!

It always sounds like a great idea

... to check your email quick before work, until you see you have 13 new items, mostly school-related, even though you were ALMOST caught up at 11 pm

... to send a post card to A Recovering American Soldier, until you read this

... to clean your oven, except that one blob of food can fry the lower element and you won't have an oven for a month and you will get really sick of hamburger and chicken cooked up in a skillet (no matter what you add to the skillet)

... to have the weather on in the morning, until you actually SEE the temperature outside, then you don't want to leave the house

Stamping

No, not stamping my feet. Check out Tim Holtz and his "12 tags of Christmas" entries.

This could get expensive for me. I don't know if I'm into the whole ephemera idea, mainly because being a mom I have SO many photos to keep up with. But... Distress ink, distress embossing powder (when cooled, some of it flakes off ) . Hmmm. I need to go to Michael's. (The voices on my shoulders are saying "No, it's Christmas time" and "But what about presents for ME?")

I do have a few inkpads (Colorbox, rainbow, and a couple of petal pads). I just ordered the KOTM (SOLD OUT! It's only the 5th of the month. Wives are yelling at husbands today. Mark my words. ) as soon as I saw it because I was up until almost 1 am that night working on the photo book for my dad, and I just loved it and wanted it. (Gimme, gimme. )Anyway I realized that I have a TON of acrylic paint (See, MURAL...) and acrylic paint is apparently OK to use in scrapbooks with foam stamps of that type. Why didn't someone tell me this???

Well

It's like that old song, "What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours."

I still have 583 things to do but at least I am 99% certain that I'll still be gainfully employed come January 1.

That and a frosty Labatt made a big difference today.

thanks!

Harder to breathe

Today was NOT a good day. Much like a old hard drive, I am so fragmented that I can't seem to accomplish ANY task. And they multiply. They sit on my desk and expand like that foam that you spray in cracks, and it expands and expands and then no air can get through. And I count them and think "shit, there's so many." And the counting, the lists, it's just a way to avoid the doing and the nagging whispers of the other things that are on my mind.

People are bugging me. People in my family, from my work (one client didn't listen to my instructions, then when I did what I said he should do and it worked, he said "I guess all it needed was a woman's touch." Eff you, pal. Really.) From my kid's school, people taking things they aren't entitled to (from a Catholic school, dammit, aren't we supposed to be above this crap? why do you bother sending your child to this school, when you would so willingly steal?) and everything. Everywhere. Everyone.

I don't want to deal with people around me getting laid off and people harrassing me about the pre-holiday plans that *I* choose to make, and who I invite to my home, and who I don't, and what I do with my kids when they have days off. I will not be made to feel like an ungrateful person because I don't accept a "solution" that's horribly inconvenient for me and serves only the purpose of the person offering it.



You drain me dry and make me wonder why I'm even here
This double vision I was seeing is finally clear
You want to stay but you know very well I want you gone
Not fit to fuckin' tread the ground that I'm walking on
When it gets cold outside and you got nobody to love
You'll understand what I mean when I say
There's no way we're gonna give up
And like a little girl cries in the face of a monster that lives in her dreams
Is there anyone out there cause it's getting harder and harder to breathe

And also

while browsing for my previous post (yes, these weekly art posts are mostly for me, I want to know more about art...less about Brit Brit, the Spice Girls, and so on...)

I found this index of online tours and found that it is accompanied by suggested music. (Latin! Whoo boy.) Actually right now I'm listening to part of Missa Brevis.

Sunday Gallery

Today's artist is Pieter Claesz. I came across Vanitas Still Life in my MOMA book, but when I googled it online for this post I found a slightly different image here (which is the one above, yes, but has other pieces of his work... I found the version in my book here. Confusing. Definitely different. So was this guy bored all winter? Who knows.

At any rate, for a more sophisticated analysis, you can chew on this:

Nearly all Dutch still-lifes include - to a greater or lesser extent - the aspect of vanitas, a lament about the transience of all things. It is often symbolized by objects such as a skull or a clock, as in this painting, where the effect is enhanced by an overturned wine glass and an extinguished candle. Claesz's metaphysical criticism concentrates on book knowledge and its futility in the face of eternity. The claim of the enlightenment that book contains knowledge, experience and thoughts that were permanently valid beyond the life-span of an individual is met with resigned scepticism. With hues of grey, brown and green that tend to add up to a general 'monochrome' impression, Claesz's still-life was painted at a time when European book market was going through a phase of considerable expansion.

- found it here.

An Office

if you are a fan of The Office, check out ...

An Office

the 2nd one is pretty funny

If I only had a time machine

This picture is my favorite thing in the world today. Going from left to right, I think #4 & 5 are my great grandparents. (My dad's mom's parents, to be specific). #8 is Helen, my other great grandmother on my dad's side. My father's dad's mom..... are you confused yet?

#9 is my dad's mother, and #10 at the far right is her husband, who is Helen's son. I think the others are Helen's other sons, but I'm not sure who the heck #2 is. Probably a wife; I have to compare to other photos but I'm sure it's not my great aunt.

When I was little, we lived in NYC with #9 & 10. He used to say to me, "Don't ever get married." and then he'd wink at me and I'd laugh. Hmmm.